Thursday 2 August 2012

fragments of a life ....

Another of my artist's books - titled 'fragments of a life'.  This book is made up of ten acrylic paintings that I did in a series - another story.  The concept behind this volume is that our lives leave their mark, their trace marks on the landscape and from above, it is likely to see these as patterns floating across the Terra Firma sometimes with ephemeral brushes and at others with heavy gouges and imprints.  However the mark is made it is inevitable that our tracemarks are left behind.

The book is large - 51cms x 37cms, double mounted and embossed, bound in perspex and then protected in another perspex slip cover.  It is incredibly hard to photograph (as an amateur) and show how tactile this book is.  It is one of my favourites though, probably because I enjoyed the painting.  The first few photos more accurately give the sense of the book though not much of it is revealed.  You can see the lovely papers and soft edges. The paintings actually look better with the double mounting though in the detail photos only the back mounting is seen.
























These are some of the ten paintings, not all.  In many of them you will see echoes of doorways and I have reinforced these with embossings.  These doors represent different choices we make and take along life's journey. It is actually not a symbol I use very often.













There is an image above which is my favourite and reminds me in many ways of Chagall's painting 'The Bride' and the quote from the film Nottinghill, that 'Happiness isn't happiness without a violin-playing goat'!  See if you can work out which one it is.


6 comments:

  1. this is so beautiful Susan - I long to handle the book (white gloved of course!) what an absolute treasure - I love the idea of containing tracemarks within a bound book which is also full of the invisible tracemarks of making!

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    1. Thank you so much Rosie. Tracemarks are an ongoing exploration with my work but I love the concept of yours about the tracemarks within the making of each book or artwork too. A gorgeous thought ....

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  2. A book that tells a beautiful story, beautifully. The embossing has shown up really well and the way it interplays with the paintings is so right.
    I love that quote from Notting Hill (and the movie) and I go for the third from the bottom!

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    1. Thanks my friend. You know this book of course. For me that embossing was fairly atypical - just solid blocks of embossing rather than the markings I usually use but they did feel right, and very much part of the imagery and thought process.
      Yep - third from the bottom. Now that i look again I am also thinking 'Ophelia'. Can't see anything to remind me of the violin playing goat but the feel of the person floating in the sky has definitely appeared.

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  3. oh, this is precious! such a gorgeous book! love the paintings (the white ones sing!) and the embossing is brilliant. a clever, subtle, beautifully executed highlight of the theme. third from the bottom is my guess as well.

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    1. Thank you Anca. I haven't done many books with paintings as such - a couple of outback Australia which have little oil paintings in them but mostly my books are made with etchings or drawings. Think I will have to try some more as they encourage me to play more with colour. Maybe as spring approaches again ......

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