Where the heart is

Pacha — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 06:38:26 +0000

The recent “Embodiment – a human canvas” event at Native Lounge in SLO reminded me of one of my favorite movies. It’s from the 90s and pretty cheesy. But there’s some spectacular artwork in it. One of the characters is an artist working on a calendar for an insurance company (if I remember correctly), one painting for each month. They are Trompe l’oeil murals with live models on painted backgrounds. The paintings in the movie are by artist Timna Woollards.

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

Artist Alexa Mead does something quite similar – painting live models in front of a painted background. It is almost the opposite of a Trompe-l’œil (French for ‘trick the eye’), an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects appear in three dimensions, instead of actually being a two-dimensional painting. Mead and Woollards are painting real people to make them look like they are 2D.

Here’s one of my favorite Trompe-l’œils, “Escaping Criticism” by Pere Borrell del Caso:

And here is an example from Alexa Mead:

the process

the finished piece

the artist with model

Color me inspired. Gosh, I have to find some time to paint…

Oh, by the way, the movie is called “Where the heart is”, or “Die Zeit der bunten Vögel” in German (meaning “The time of the colorful birds”, which I find more fitting). And it is at the top of my Netflix list.

Pacha's Golb

Where the heart is