Olympia

I believe that the best way to be self-taught is to find your heroes and learn from them.

If the title and pose are familiar to you then you know this piece was inspired by Edouard Manet's Olympia. In my childhood I was romanced by French painters, in particular the impressionists and those surrounding that movement. They're the rock era of visual art world. They were daring enough, loose and (what I felt) non-judgemental enough of art that I wasn't afraid to try and fail. (Unlike my teenage years when I admired Sargeant and learned to obsess over perfection, to my own detriment).

I had to seek out great arts myself if I wanted to learn. The safest studies would be the ones even non art-enthusiasts might recognize. I'd draw David or Venus de Milo over and over again until I could understand.

The human figure is beautiful and there's so much to learn from it. I think even as child I thought there was nothing more complex, more varied and more interesting than the human form. So yea, imagine a 10 year old drawing nudes with huge pecs and exaggerated abs. No parents are encouraging when they see their little girl drawing nudes and having no understanding of why these types of drawings were off limits.

This piece was done more recently - by recently I mean some time in the last decade. (I have an on-again, off-again love affair with painting so timelines get blurred).

Anyway, back to Manet. Olympia is your classic reclining figure, so the pose felt like a "must do" exercise. Plus I had just gotten some massive canvases, the most tempting of which was this wide 40x101cm beauty that deserved a great landscape. I couldn't paint a landscape if I tried. Which I have, with many failures. But of course the figure is a landscape all its own, with the gentleness of the slopes and valleys. Manet's nudes seem to be illuminated, pale white figures against a very dark background, which I didn't even want to mimic. I wanted more depth to her skin tones. But then I wanted to mix styles as well.

I played around with her features and skin tone a lot, hoping to be more daring with the use of orange and got stuck. I'm at a point with this piece where I'm too afraid to correct anything. I was also in a huge Bobbie Burgers phase and took the opportunity to play with loose abstract flowers to cover up the hand and manipulate the way your eyes move across it.

For any impressionists out there that want to have some serious playtime I'd recommend looking up Bobbie Burgers. She's a modern abstract/impressionistic artist. Her work makes you want to squish paint around and dribble, it makes you almost giddy.

Point is - find your heroes, get some exercise, and simply have fun.
#figure painting #art #impressionist