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Self Portrait in Stars AKA When Dreams Come True
by Jill Peckelun on 5/17/2010 10:39:12 AM
1 Comment
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Self Portrait in Stars
I had a painting simmering in my head for months about a figurative portrait somehow done in stars. Then one morning I was standing in front of the mirror in my underwear and I thought, "Free model!" And got my camera.
I'm a vivid dreamer with, if I do say so myself, remarkable recall of my dreams and have kept a dream journal for decades. In one dream I was sprawled on my back at the family farm looking up at the starry sky. Suddenly all the stars started to swirl around and some of them became people made up of stars and they were flying around the sky, some coming down toward the ground before swooping up again. I thought, "I'm not missing out on this" and held up my hands so they could touch my fingers as they swooshed by and reached down toward me. It was wonderful and I woke up happy. I've never forgotten that dream and always wanted to paint an aspect of it in some way. Then this spring I read a fabulous poem by William Wordworth from his Ode, Intimations of Immortality and I got really motivated.
“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home…”
Isn't it lovely when you find someone else who thinks like you do? But, I needed to work out both the concept and the technical aspects of it. I've always admired Gustav Klimt's work and his use of gold leaf in paintings. Somehow I wanted to use gold leaf to help represent the stars. I've played around with acrylic metalic gold paint, but never used any actual leaf work in a painting so I was taking the entire process slowly. I figured it was going to really work well, or be a complete flop.
What I ended up doing was first an acrylic underpainting of my own figure in some detail. Then using acrylic medium as glue I applied gold leaf here and there. I used a clear acrylic medium to seal the entire painting. Then painted over it in oil paint, pretty much covering the figure until only the illusion of someone coming out of the stars was apparent. Because I was making it up as I was going along, I kept the whole thing pretty small. (Small painting, small problems my teacher used to say.) I'm pretty happy with it. Because it was a new technique for me and an inventive kind of painting there were more than the usual number of surprises along the way. I liked that.
I don't know where I'm going with this, but I'm thinking of doing some more dream paintings. I do a lot of flying in my dreams...
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| All images are copyright Jill Peckelun ....... Telephone: 484-350-3310...... Friend me on Facebook |
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