Lost Hearts

Lost Hearts

Digital painting and photo textures.

For the Specters and Dreams series.

Some ghosts return only to ensure that they are not forgotten.

xxx

Number Thirteen

 Number Thirteen

Digital drawing/painting, except for the floorboards & scissors, which I took from a photograph.

What a jolly unseasonal offering!

Inspired by: Growing pains, adolescence, my own past (I turned thirteen on Friday the 13th), the X-Files, invisible siblings, Aimee Bender, Angela Carter, current dream symbols.

I like the idea of a room without walls in the sky. Could also represent a sort of diving board or gangplank...into the unknown. Maturation, or the close of childhood, the violence of an unplanned departure.

Best wishes for the holidays xxx

Secret Heart

Secret Heart, for the Imagined portraits series.

A few variations: Digital painting and collage.

Horrible hayfever and sinus problems at the moment. I still haven't quite got around to replacing the drawing tablet either: working with the damaged one is beginning to drive me a little bit crazy...it tends to fly off all over the place, tripling actions and skipping commands. Why don't I replace it? I'm not sure! I have been so caught up in 'real life' non-creative stuff recently (which has made for quite a pleasant change, admittedly) that I keep on putting it off. The works above were inspired (partly) by the movie 'Let The Right One In', also by Japanese/Korean ball jointed doll imagery...Dark Alice, the ghost stories of M.R James, terrifyingly self-possessed children! My favourite is the floating head, which was the initial 'rough' version before properly working into the face. I imagine her to have so much to tell, so many painful secrets that may never find expression in the waking world. Oh!

xxx

Recognition

Recognition

Hollow

Digital painting and photomontage. For the Specters and Dreams gallery.

I have finally expanded my online gallery space here at my blog. A few new projects have been added (brought over from Flickr) this week, although several are still in progress. I can't wait to see it complete!

I like how the seven of hearts/spades keeps on turning up in recent images. Something which links them all, inexplicably. Or secretly. The Recognition girl keeps one arm behind her back, forever witholding something. Enigmas, both of them. Hugely symbolic. Where fantasy and nightmares overlap.

xxx

Recurring Dream

 

Recurring dream, or psychokinesis. I can't quite decide upon the title. A haunting in dreams, something that I am familiar with. The five bats and the king of spiders may be one and the same. I'm speaking in riddles because it is impossible not to.

Currently reading Brothers and Beasts: an anthology of men on fairytales by Kate Bernheimer.

xxx

Prince of Hearts

 

 

Digital drawing/illustration.

Dedicated to my kitty, Mirlo, for his 9th birthday today.

xxx

Broken Heart Pillow

 

House of Cards or Broken Heart Pillow. I can't decide which to go with. Apologies for the watermark placement, it has been one of those weeks.

This took some doing, a combination of digital painting and photomontage. I thought of Poe, which is probably obvious. Also influenced by early Hammer films: the girl reminds me of a child character portrayed in The House that Dripped Blood, starring the eternally stunning Christopher Lee.

There's a story here. Something I appear to have returned to recently: placing more complex narratives into my work. The stories themselves only half apparent, perhaps what we invest in them completes the narrative? I have my own feelings invested within this picture, personal and impossible to explain in words, but I am also fascinated by what others perceive, how each of us will interperet it so differently!

She does not suffer from a broken heart. So content within her hermetic, private, sealed off world - she represents the artist to some extent. And my own peculiar double nature: a longing to be left alone for days on end without disturbance so that I can indulge in creating, dreaming, wondering, reading. But also my desire to become social, to share ideas, to explore the word around me, to take on new experiences. This image contains both sinister and innocent elements, for me. A balance that I am just particularly drawn to.

xxx

PS: I will be back around the 21st of July, hopefully with a bunch of new prints for the shop! Take care.