It’s always satisfying when someone wants to live with one of my paintings, and this one, titled “Paris Think and Feel” from 1998, was recently sold. It’s a 30 x 34 inch oil on canvas, and the imagery caused the people viewing it to speculate on what is going on here. As an artist, I generally don’t like to explain too much, as I often find the interpretations by others to be quite interesting. In this case, there was talk of Olympic rings, UFOs, and other miscellaneous details that caused me to laugh. In this case, I decided to go ahead and share the visual inspiration that prompted the painting.
As far as the overall composition, it is from a series of paintings that I did in the late 1990s where I made a painting within the painting, often depicted either as crooked, or off the edge of the base canvas, and in this case, it’s both of those things. The decorative bands around the image are acting as the frame of the painting within the painting, and when one sees it from a distance, sometimes the white base canvas isn’t noticed right away (due to the bold colors of the painting within), leading one to wonder, why is this painting hanging so crooked on the wall, when in fact the actual canvas is not crooked at all.
As far as the figures within the painting, it was inspired from a trip to Paris back in 1992. The main female figure was based on this gravestone found in the Montmartre Cemetery in Paris. The figure seems so dramatically distressed or in extreme grief, it was quite striking.
It’s funny, though, all the years since I’ve taken this photo, for some reason I never looked closely at the words on the side of the grave marker before today to see that it mentions “Dominique Herbillon,” although it also lists “Valentine Herbillon,” and a search on the image suggests it’s also a resting place for “Alexandre Emile Herbillon,” who was a French military commander in the 1800s. So is this woman Dominique? Or Valentine? Or a generic figure mourning the death of Alexandre? I’m not finding any conclusive evidence to any of the above, but I wasn’t really thinking about any of the potential real-life references when I made the painting.
The second figure in my painting, positioned to the right of the platform on which the figure is positioned, is based on my own photo of Rodin’s famous “Thinker” sculpture, also in Paris. The rest of the painting is abstract elements, meant to help give it my own twist as opposed to simply painting existing elements.
So, just out of curiosity, is it helpful to have the background on how or why a painting looks as it does? Or do you prefer to see it and interpret it for yourself? As an artist, do you share the origin of your own artworks? If you have thoughts on this, please share in the comments section below.