Continuing the Land of Confusion collection, here is Fifteen Hastings, dedicated to my sister and her family who currently live in one of the Hastings.
Fifteen Hastings
digital image
Thirty Seven Woodvilles
I grew up in the town of Woodville, in New Zealand where my ancestors were some of the first settlers. They had emigrated from County Tipperary in Ireland where there is also a Woodville.
My Woodville is a junction town, and there are many road signs around the North Island of New Zealand pointing to it. My father would often say that all roads lead to Woodville. With at least thirty seven places named Woodville globally he has a good chance of being correct.
40 Most Mentioned
Featuring slices of the following works:
Mona Lisa (Leonardo da Vinci, 1517)
The Scream (Edvard Munch, 1893)
The Starry Night (Vincent van Gogh, 1889)
The Last Supper (Leonardo da Vinci, 1498)
Girl with a Pearl Earring (Johannes Vermeer, 1665)
The Creation of Adam (Michelangelo, 1512)
The Persistence of Memory (Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1931)
A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (Georges Seurat, 1886)
The Great Wave off Kanagawa (Hokusai, 1832)
Guernica (Pablo Picasso, 1937)
Starry Night Over the Rhone (Vincent van Gogh, 1888)
The Night Watch (Rembrandt, 1642)
The School of Athens (Raphael, 1509)
The Son of Man (René Magritte, 1964)
The Kiss (Gustav Klimt, 1908)
American Gothic (Grant Wood, 1930)
The Birth of Venus (1486)
Cafe Terrace at Night (Vincent van Gogh, 1888)
Nighthawks (Edward Hopper, 1942)
Bal du moulin de la Galette (Pierre-Auguste Renoir, 1876)
Christina’s World (Andrew Wyeth)
Lady with an Ermine (Leonardo da Vinci, 1490)
The Garden of Earthly Delights (Hieronymus Bosch, 1504)
Irises (Vincent van Gogh, 1889)
Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (Gustav Klimt, 1907)
Las Meninas (Diego Velázquez, 1656)
Vitruvian Man (Leonardo da Vinci, 1490)
Whistler’s Mother (James Abbott McNeill Whistler, 1871)
The Potato Eaters (Vincent van Gogh, 1885)
The Last Judgment (Michelangelo, 1541)
Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (Édouard Manet, 1863)
Ginevra de’ Benci (Leonardo da Vinci, 1478)
Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (Caspar David Friedrich, 1818)
The Torment of Saint Anthony (Michelangelo, 1488)
Liberty Leading the People (Eugène Delacroix, 1830)
Fortitude (1470)
The Burial of the Count of Orgaz (El Greco, 1588)
The Art of Painting (Johannes Vermeer, 1666)
Impression, Sunrise (Claude Monet, 1872)
Head of a Woman (Leonardo da Vinci, 1508)
Horror vacui
Horror vacui (physics) : Nature abhors a vacuum.
Horror vacui (art) : The fear of empty space.
Like a sculptor who sees the statue in a block of stone or the potter who sees the pot in the lump of clay, artists see the potential. Their fear of empty space and abhorrence of a vacuum compels them to create and turn their imagination into reality. Motivation to overcome procrastination.
A social media presence is essential and Theo has recently joined a few social networks. Most of them allow for customization of the profile. Often the color scheme, background images and sometimes fonts are changeable to suit the personality of user.
Because Theo has not created a volume of work yet, we needed to produce something quickly for the cover photo on the Facebook page. By default, Facebook has this image for cover photos:
It is rather dull and grey. It cries out “replace me with anything colorful!”.
Producing Horror vacui to answer this cry was rather quick and simple:
- Create an image 851 by 315 pixels in GIMP (OpenSource photo editing software).
- Capture an image of pencils and a paintbrush with my Macbook FaceTime HD camera and Photo Booth.
Original image for Horror vacui - Import the photo into GIMP and use various tools and effects to produce the art.
- Select the objects and move them to a new layer.
- Select the natural highlights and shadows of the background and render clouds/plasma and apply canvas and weave filters.
- Add a filters for coffee stain and torn border
This work, Horror vacui, represents what the artist sees when they look at a blank canvas. The image hidden deep within the fabric is trying to break through the canvas and become visible.
Horror vacui is representative of theme of potential in Theo’s Prospective collection – art which is prophetic or predictive in nature and hints at what could be. Due to the urgency and speed of its creation, this work is not necessarily representative of the quality of the rest of the collection.
