TAKING LIBERTIES WITH THE MASTERS

This is an ongoing series entitled ‘Taking Liberties with the Masters’. They are both a homage and intervention where I playfully interact on postcards and book plates of other artists’ paintings. The images I select are part of the flotsam and jetsam that embodies my studio practice as reference and inspiration for other paintings.

Many of the paintings that we are familiar with and inspired by have come to us through secondary imaging – via the internet, printed in books or as reproduction postcards. It is a strange way to view painting as it contains none of the fundamental qualities that encapsulate my love of painting – namely paint. They lack a sense of scale, feel for paint application and any beauty of surface. They still retain their qualities of form and composition, but are changed into something new and almost ‘throwaway’.

Susann Sprouting        Oil paint on found book plate       2014

Through adding oil paint onto the book plates, I find myself not only building an intimate relationship with these works, but it also brings the viewer up close to consider them once more as living paintings -  mischievously re-contextualised and thereby continuing the ongoing conversation between artists throughout art history.

These four works are all Peter Paul Rubens book plates.

Closely Bound         Oil paint on found book plate        2014

Over Time They Grew More Alike        Oil on found book plate        2014

Detail of a Scene           Oil on found book plate          2014