The Fine Art Of Dying
Good Morning,
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I am having an early one this morning, up again at 4am and enjoying the light.
It has been raining during the night and every roof is a gleaming gunmetal grey, with the asphalt showing so many patches that it looks like a view of fields from an aircraft,
All very understated, with a pale cloudy sky.
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Each day, the same subject, painted in different styles using a varying palette.
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Talking about art.
Did you see the painting that recently won the £25,000 first prize BP Portrait Award.
It was won by a 63 year old woman called Daphne Todd.
The winning art is a picture of her mother,Annie Mary Todd.
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The work is entitled Last Portrait Of Mother and took the artist three days of solid work to complete, in April 2009, without even taking out enough time for coffee breaks.
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She did say that it was one of her easier paintings to complete because her mother kept so very still the whole time.
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The reason for that was because her mother was dead.
The painting was therefore done in the refrigerated room of a funeral parlour, the work stopping only when her mother began to change colour.
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Apparently there had been a discussion about the ‘devotional’ work before her mother’s death and she had been given permission to do the study.
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This is not so unusual a thing to do, given an artist’s nature, and there are many precedents for this.
There was a very good study done by Claude Monet when his wife Camille was dying in 1879 and he was seeing the changing colours.
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There was also a painting commisioned by Sir Kenelm Digby to commemorate his wife’s death.
He asked Van Dyck to carry out the work immediately and the preliminary sketches for the art were carried out shortly after her death.
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Life….and death….are art!
Have a fine day.
J,x.
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