Self-Portrait Nude #5
Re(un)dressing the balance
Scrolling further down the page you will see the image which links to the heading of today's blog (for those who don't like such open self-expression I suggest you click on the 'return' button top-left of the screen... and no hard feelings). It is not difficult to find nudity on the net... but it is more difficult to find on the net than "sex" - explicit or otherwise. There are not many images around of "normal" nakedness... so occasionally I will undress to redress the balance, so to speak.
My previous examples of "Self-Portrait Nude" photography have been taken relaxing in a French courtyard overlooked by a convent, lying on a brass bedstead in a dark-chocolate coloured room with honey-coloured floorboards somewhere in the North of England, reflection in a glazed door in London, cooling off again in a French garden by taking an impromptu hose pipe shower... and below, reflected in a French hotel bedroom wardrobe mirror. It was snapped whilst cooling off in the breeze from an open window during a break in art-studies one day last summer when it was too hot to be outside in the sun. There's also my article on "The Penis in Art" for those so interested.
I had been working on a series of sketches, or rather studies, for larger paintings... which I may never get around to doing as we will be on the move again a couple of months from now. This time we really want to see new people and places... and the Picasso studios and galleries in various towns in southern France and northern Spain will be some of the first destinations.
On that hot, sultry afternoon the combination of dust inhaled from the Conté and Rembrandt crayons and droplets of spray from the pastel-fixative aerosol hanging in the still air was making me sneeze (the smell of the latter always reminds me of Pear Drops - are those sweets still available?). But I remember it mainly from reading in detail, for the first time, about the life and work of Willem de Kooning... and comparing my own artwork designs in the foreground with his clean, graphic paintings depicted on the open pages of one of his books on the chair. As I said, I'd been working on my designs for some time (this one based on the outline of a modern chaise-longue... and one of a series of classic furniture designs I'm using as inspiration for exploring linear shapes and colours), and felt a sense of validation comparing my work with his.
June 7 2007 Update Here's my latest "art nude" self-portrait in a misty shower taken whilst testing an Olympus E-1 camera to see if it was showerproof as claimed.
11:08:03 PM 
|
