Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Babydoll

Original Painting - Acrylic on canvas 24x36
(click on painting to enlarge)
This is without a doubt the creepiest painting I've ever made.  I asked my (at the time) teenage daughter if I could use one of her old dolls as a model and she gave me Babydoll. I proceeded to mutilate the doll for the scary effect I was after only to find out she still wanted her doll intact. Who knew? I painted this about 30 years ago, and then roughly 15 years ago I revisited it and added the Raven.

She wrote a paper on it in college writing class when she was required to write a description of a work of art. She received an "A" on the assignment so it wasn't a total loss. At least that's how I see it.

This painting actually made me feel very uneasy while I was painting it late at night and I had to quit and only worked on it during the day after that. I didn't like the look in the doll's eye staring at me from the canvas. My traumatized daughter has forgiven me and we still laugh about it every once in awhile.

Read about two artists and their different career paths by Robert Genn; http://faso.com/brushbuzz/links/7675