Gauri Dwivedi
My inspiration for the National art gallery project was the painting by Raden Saleh, Boschbrand. It was created in 1849 and was an oil on canvas painting with the dimensions of 300 x 396cm. Raden Saleh was an Indonesian artist who was known as one of the most important 19th century artists from Java. He is known for his landscape and animal hunt paintings. He trained and worked in Europe among high class and royal society and spent more than 20 years there studying art.
In my view the painting has a different style and colour combination in contrast to some of the other paintings in the Romantic European times. Most of the paintings expressed a lot of energy and consisted of bright colours and brush strokes. However, Boschbrand is created from dull and dark colours that seem more natural compared to the other paintings. What I noticed about this composition is that it portrays the atmosphere of the scene which depicts the animals in this painting fleeing away from a forest fire in the forests of Java. The painter used warm colours to show the fire and how strong and huge its impact has on the number of wildlife being destroyed and grey to show the smoke. The painting reflects on the painter because it is situated in Indonesia, where the painter originally comes from but uses European style to create it.
The numbers I chose for my interpretation are 50 and 2965. The number 50 is the number of years the tiger has been the national animal of India, where my cultural roots originate from. I used this number because in the painting the tiger is a more focused animal. I used white for the 0 which really contrasts the background. The number 2965 is the number of tigers currently living in India, and used blue which I took from the horizon. In my interpretation I have used a blend of red and orange to create the background by using strokes and I picked these colours because of how it represents the fire. On top on the background, I have used pieces of blocks with shades of green and brown and stamped them on the corners to portray the grass and how the greenery has been damaged. I used stencils of a tiger face with lighter colours like yellow and peach which slightly contrast the background and the bottom of the painting I used stencils of fire. My interpretation used most of the features that stood out to me and can portray the scene of the painting.