OTHER INSPIRATIONS FOR PAINTINGS

Last week, I talked about the real world inspirations for art. Today I am going to go into another source for creating artwork: Literature.

I love to read and am most interested in fables. Joseph Campbell wrote about “The Hero’s Journey”. The stories that come down to us through the ages are filled with heros and heroines who overcome obstacles to find their truth There are two such stories that speak to me and they are both about heroines.

The first is Alice from “Alice in Wonderland” and “Through the Looking Glass”. I created the painting at the top of this page called, “The Looking Glass” based on these two books. In the first story, the queen orders her workers to “paint the roses red” and in the second, Alice enters the looking glass to find new adventures and new worlds. The power of this legend is how it mirrors our experiences and shows how Alice overcame hardships to find her true world. Their messages are timeless and they continue to teach us lessons that we need reminded of.

The second story I am attracted to is “The Wizard of Oz”. I have done a series of paintings based on this story. Three of them are shown here. The first is titled, “Over the Rainbow” (above), The second is titled,”There’s No Place Like Home” (below)

And the third is, “It’s Always Best to Start at the Beginning”. There is a fourth that I will show next week along with the fifth that I am still creating at this writing.

These paintings were created with a method I call “Mixed Media with Tissue Paper”. They are executed on masonite using acrylic, tissue paper, metal, and ink. I also used stamps in most of them. All of these are available for sale at the time I am writing this blog post.

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