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Judith’s Reprise

July 23, 2010 in Art, Influences | Comments closed

My newest painting is now up on my website under the New Works gallery.  Here is a close up detail shot of it:

Judith's Reprise (detail), oil on canvas, 18" x 24"

This is part of my new series of paintings, kind of an amalgamation of past different works, from the patterns to the background to the animal “mask” head.  It is also a reprise of a painting that I made while I was in London during my Masters degree, in 2003.  It was a large painting that I never finished and abandoned in London after moving back to Vancouver.  That painting was a self-portrait and somewhat autobiographical version of Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes (c. 1612).

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Slaying Holofernes (c. 1612)

I saw this painting, in all of its gory splendor in Florence, Italy – an amazing trip where I saw so much beautiful and inspiring artwork and architecture.  It was great to see the original after only viewing it in books and on the internet, which was my reference material for my painted version.  The story of Judith and Holofernes intrigued me, and having studied art history throughout my undergraduate degree, I was interested in all the paintings that this allegory had inspired.  Here’s a brief description from Wikipedia about the story of Judith:

In the story, Judith, a beautiful widow and chosen by God, uses her charms to enter the tent of Holofernes, an Assyrian general out to destroy Judith’s hometown. Overcome with drink, he passes out and is decapitated by Judith; his head is taken away in a basket (often depicted as carried by an elderly female servant). Artists have mainly chosen one of two possible scenes (with or without the servant): the decapitation, with Holofernes prone on the bed, or the heroine holding or carrying the head…

For many artists and scholars, Judith was a character whose sexualized femininity interestingly and sometimes contradictorily combined with her masculine aggression.

It’s actually amazing to see all the different depictions of Judith in art.  From Michaelangelo’s version in the Sistine Chapel to Klimt’s two versions, it is interesting how one story can be painted in so many ways and styles.  Here are a few of my favourites:

Caravaggio, Judith Beheading Holofernes (c. 1598-1599)

There’s something about the look on the young Judith’s face in contrast with the horror on Holofernes face that fascinates me.

Gustav Klimt, Judith I (1901)

Gustav Klimt, Judith II (1909)

When I was younger, I actually didn’t ever see Holofernes’ heads in these paintings.  I was so taken by the beauty of the patterns and women that I never suspected that this Judith was the one and same Judith from the story.

So are you intrigued about Judith’s Reprise now?  You can see my painting on my website here.

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Loop: Revisiting the past

April 23, 2010 in Art, Early Works, Friends, In the studio, Influences | 2 comments

In my London studio (2005)

In my London studio (2005)

A running theme through my work is the past, whether it be recollections of memories, nostalgia or histories.

I met up with an old friend recently, and it got me thinking about how revisiting the past can be important in understanding our present.  This goes for life and also for my art, as I sometimes forget about certain paintings I did in the past, and it’s like unearthing a treasure when I find them again.  All the memories, thoughts and ideas that went into the artwork pop up again in my mind.  And then sometimes there is a sudden epiphany about where a “new” or current idea I am working on actually came from.

*****

Les Saltimbanques - Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso, Les Saltimbanques, 1901

In 2000, when I first arrived in Paris with my fellow UBC Fine Art classmate Jessica Gabriel, we found a postcard of Picasso’s “Les Saltimbanques”.  It is not one of his most famous paintings, so it is actually very hard to find the painting online or the proper title of it.  It was painted in 1901, with Picasso’s famous harlequin figure and his companion.  When Jessica and I first saw the postcard, we said, “That’s us!”, bought the postcard and then quickly forgot about it, with all the excitement of living abroad for the first time.

By the end of that year, after many highs and lows, our Paris adventure was coming to a close, and we thought it would be fitting to recreate the painting.  So with some art school creativity, we managed to pull together some towels and blankets and rummage through our closet and art supplies to recreate the look of the painting.  With a limitation of 24 shots on our roll of film, we were determined to recreate the painting in a photograph, but quickly got bored of that and well, here are the results:

Paris, France, 2001 - by Roselina Hung & Jessica Gabriel

Paris, France, 2001 - by Roselina Hung & Jessica Gabriel

After we returned to Vancouver, the series of photographs was exhibited once during our final year at UBC and then put away and forgotten about.  While I was working on my Painting Film exhibition, with my Art History series, I revisited this series of photographs and thought about the process of turning a painting into a photograph, or in this case a series of photographs, and I decided to paint the photograph and return it to a painting.  Here is a photo of the painting in my London studio.  Unfortunately I can’t find a photo of the finished painting on my computer at the moment, so this was a work in progress shot:

Les Echangeuses

Les Echangeuses, Oil on canvas, 60 x 90 cm, 2005

Jessica and I then revisited the idea in 2007, after I moved back from London and we were both in Vancouver again.  Some ideas were thrown around but nothing came from it.  I am almost positive that it will come up again in the future, and new work will spring from the past.

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Looking to Raphael

December 1, 2009 in Art, Influences | Comments closed

I have always worked in two veins…one which is very personal and one which is more “public”, for lack of a better word.  The people in the paintings in The Way We Were are from pop culture print media, referencing old department store catalogues and pulp romance novels.  While they are paintings of people, these people do not really exist so I don’t really put them in the same category as my portraits.  With my portraits, I work from photographs that I take of people I know, mainly family and friends, and I am very selective about who I choose to paint.  These paintings take many hours, days and weeks to complete, so if I choose to paint someone, I have my reasons.  Every once in a while, however, I come back to painting myself.

Self-portraits interest me, and there is so much to be learned by looking at artists’ self-portraits throughout art history.  With mine, there is often a story behind the painting, a narrative that is hidden in the symbols.  They are usually painted at key turning points or events in my life, and the hours I spend on the painting are very much like quiet contemplative time for me.  A lot of people were intrigued these portraits during the Crawl, so I thought I would turn to my blog to talk about the stories behind these paintings.

My first miniature self-portrait was She wanted to do more than just pass….  This was painted while I was still living in London, after a trip to Italy, where I had just seen Raphael’s Lady with a Unicorn at the Galleria Borghese.  I liked the composition of the painting, with the Italian landscape in the background and the architecture of the columns framing the piece.  The expression on the subject’s face was ambiguous and with a little unicorn on her lap, no one has ever been able to explain exactly who or what this painting is about.

Lady with a Unicorn - Raphael, c. 1505

Lady with a Unicorn - Raphael (c. 1505)

My British visa was coming to an end and with my art career in mind, I had to decide where I wanted to go.  I was waiting to hear back about a residency in New York at the time, and also in the process of applying for a work permit to stay in London.  These were my two obvious first choices, however, Vancouver was always an option as well, as it has always been home to me.  So in the background of She wanted to do more than just pass…, there is New York on one side and London on the other, with the Atlantic Ocean shrunken between them.  The triangle is completed by my faithful lap dog, representing home, with an expression that hints he may know more than we think.  The stone building and seat that the Lady is seated on has become concrete and there is a haze of smog over the bi-city skyline.

She wanted to do more than just pass... (2006)

She wanted to do more than just pass... (2006)

More about the choice of clothing and title in my next post.

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Finishing touches

October 7, 2009 in Art, Exhibitions | Comments closed

I’m just putting the final touches on the last painting for my exhibition The Way We Were.  The painting is a small self-portrait that is a bit different from the other works in the show, but at the same time, it isn’t.  Cryptic, I know…  You’ll have to wait until the show opens to see what I mean.

The latest body of work has been a bit of a departure from my usual style but the self-portrait brings my continuing theme of miniature portraiture back into play.  The process of painting myself in my studio, the space where I have created the work for the show, has been the perfect way to cap off this body of work and makes a nod to some classic portrait paintings that have influenced me since my art history days; namely Las Meninas (1656) by Diego Velázquez and The Arnolfini Portrait (1434) by Jan van Eyck.

Las Meninas

Las Meninas

The Arnolfini Portrait

The Arnolfini Portrait

My latest self-portrait has similarities to both paintings.  As a bit of a teaser to the show, I will be updating the blog with some sneak peek images, details from the final painting, including dates that these sections were painted.  See if you can try to slowly piece together the image.

Here is the first one:

Sept. 1, 2009 - The Artist's Palette

Sept. 1, 2009 - The Artist's Palette

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