| This
piece is among the most popular pages on my website. It often battles
with Barbarella, My Love for
the top spot, and I would like to believe that is due to their quality.
On the other hand, maybe it's all due to name-brand recognition;
this seems to be the direction the American mind is de-evolving
today. The death of the Thinker; the rise of the Dumb Proles, all
dancing on a volcano.
Victoria's
Secrets
is the first of the models' series. I put together the first five
-- including Kari, Remembering
Marie, Untitled #3,
and Nemesisters -- in late
1998. After showing them to the owner of a coffeeshop, I decided
to create some more in early '99. What I wanted to achieve here
was something like an old, faded photograph. It all just looks so
mysterious, like a dreamlike memory.
Unfortunately,
this piece is no longer available. These first five portraits were
among the ten paintings lost in '98. You can read all the sordid
details at the Carpe Diem Baby
page (essentially, they were swiped by the coffeeshop owner, in
that classic 'Minnesota Nice' style of passive-aggressive behavior).
That's
too bad, because this is one of the best in the whole series. I
wanted portraits that looked like faded photographs, almost nostalgic.
My two major influences at the time were Jackson Pollack and Andy
Warhol. These two are about as far apart as one can get, which in
a sense inspired me to find some synthesis between them. That attempt
in fusion results in my Model Portraits.
It's
something between pop and abstract, created by hand and using the
simplist techniques possible. Victoria is, I think, the
best of the original five, and one of the series' best. |
