Saturday 22 February 2014

Another Fine Mess

We've just spent the week with our grandchildren and have been helping the family get ready for Barnaby's Star Wars party. I knew he had been making silhouettes at school, so came up with the idea of printing silhouette shapes of Darth Vador and co. so we could cover the room with lots of strong images.
Working with a five year old was great fun but it did get a bit messy. Once we had printed the figures, , Barnaby enjoyed covering everything with glitter, stars and highlighter pens.
I have also been developing my ideas for the next painting 'Contre Jour', involving silhouette figures. My plan is to show my mother's two male cousins in silhouette using the Thai shadow puppet convention that only the women spectators saw the shadows, while the men saw the real puppets. I am using this to try and show the way  the parents each saw their sons in  very different ways - as rascals or angels.
However, I have come up with a further twist. I want to represent them as the 1950s Hollywood stars, Laurel and Hardy. This is because, they  have strong silhouettes, one being fat and the other thin and both wore bowler hats. Also, as a child I saw Laurel  and Hardy for real, on the stage. I thought them very funny and almost unreal, until I saw them the next day - as tired old men getting into a taxi, looking very grumpy. 

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