Dialogue Mentor(s)

Split Panel - Forrest Williams

Split Panel - Forrest Williams

A Dialogue With Myself:

 My Junior Year Self Portrait Attempt 

    Forrest Williams:


My first of three mentors, Forrest Williams, was specifically intriguing to me because of the multiple "split panel" portraits. Not only do these pictures use rather simplified ideas (one of my goals) and also I plan on doing a split panel portrait.  I love the emotion and clear relationship tension in these pictures. Even though there is a line separating the subjects, both are clearly interacting.

Norman Rockwell

Norman Rockwell:
I chose Norman Rockwell to be my second mentor partially because I have always loved his work. This picture has always been in my house, and when I was younger my mom would ask me if I understood what was going on in the picture and how the little girl felt. I figured it out; the girl was looking at her self, disappointed with her appearance, comparing herself to the photograph on her lap. A couple days ago, in my new house, after being assigned the "dialogue with myself" self portrait project, and looking for inspiration, I walked into my laundry room and saw this painting. My attitude towards the project changed - suddenly I seemed to understand what a "dialogue with myself" meant, they're everywhere! I love the piece and it served as a huge source of inspiration for my next project!! 





David Hockney:

Smitty recommended I look at Hockney's works to see how he put figures in space, depicted his subjects with simplified ideas, and he did an entire series of two person pictures. One of the things about Hockney's work that fascinates me is the relationship between the background and his figures; it appears as if he paints his figures over the background, almost as if they are on a separate layer, rather than closely interacting with it. However strange this seemed at first look, I really like his work and I find his method of "cut and pasting" the figures very effective in his painting. In the picture at left on the top, the cat literally looks like it was cut out of separate painting and glued onto this one, but I love it. The other thing I noticed about both displayed Hockney paintings (and the others in this series) is that the figures are not directly interacting - they are either looking different places, sitting different places, or doing two completely different things. Both are always well anchored in the painting however, and a subtle relationship can always be detected; there is definitely emotion in all of his pieces. I've liked his work since last year, but never really took the time to look at it until this project, and I'm glad I did!