Fluid Paintings 1996 – 1998

 

Fluid Paintings 1996 – 1998

 

A reinterpretation of the painting The Scream by Eduard Munch. The painting depicts a person disfigured by a scream with a bald skull against the background of a stylised landscape and a bloody sky. My own painting, The Scream, was inspired by Pop Art and Op Art. It was created by re-colouring the original image in Photoshop. The intention was to clean up the original colours into more directly “upbeat” colours that would express the vibe and bustle of the PAL television electronic image system.

 

The painting The Tigress follows on from The Scream. It depicts a poltergeist courtesan hidden and occasionally emerging from the bustle of the electronic image. Surprisingly, she herself is wearing a helmet for the 3D image, which gives the impression that she herself is wandering in this unknown virtual world.

 

The painting The Impossibility of Death on the Moon links up to The Tigress. It leaves the protagonist with something reminiscent of a 3D helmet, though it is also a scarf (a noose). This is used to tie the figure to something above the painting. At first glance, the figure appears to be hanging, but the truth is that it is levitating and, like The Tigress, wandering around another parallel world without contact with its surroundings.

 

This image was created by re-colouring a famous photograph of a cormorant dying in oil, when the Gulf War caused this sticky fluid to seep out of bombed-out wells. The visual appearance of the painting is related to the fact that petroleum products such as gasoline form iridescent spots on the surface of water not unlike the ornaments of Persian carpets. Their decorative design thus evokes a sense of heavenly paradise, where victims pass after death (according to Islamic tradition). According to Semitic spiritual tradition, the rainbow is a symbol of reconciliation between God and humans and… perhaps even animals too?

 

The painting Kuwait oil Effect uses as it base the famous Gulf – War photograph of a cormorant dying in the see polluted by oil leaking from the bombarded oil wells. The oil creates rainbow – like patches on the surface. not unlike the ornaments on Persian carpets. Their ornamental design make you think of heawenly paradise, the destination of the dead ( according to the Islamic tradition ). The rainbow is a biblical symbol of atonement.

 

In Medusa, the effect of a vibrant, fluid, electronic image is used to make this mythical Gorgon appear alongside an intensely psychedelic spectre that uses Op Art tricks with complementary colours to seduce its victim with greater enchantment.

 

The painting Assassin’s Fractal is visually rooted in computer “fractal” space. All is was after was to get this space into a dactiloscopic fingerprint of a real assassin. The abstract space of the painting was thus marked by the acts of a concrete person intense enough to give you goose bumps.