Mimi Toovey
My inspiration for this piece of work was Raden Salem’s Broschbrand (Forest Fire) – 1849. Salem was an Indonesian Romantic Painter, of the Arab-Javanese ethnicity, and he was alive from 1811-1880. He was considered to be the first ‘modern’ artist from Indonesia, and his paintings corresponded with nineteenth century romanticism, which was popular in Europe at the time.
I enjoyed the painting very much, especially all of the contrast in colour, for example the fact, that the right side of the painting is bluer, and the colours are more cool toned, and comes off as calmer and more peaceful, whereas the left side of the painting is red, and is slightly more chaotic. I think the two different emotions shown in this painting makes it unique and made it stand out to me the most out of all the paintings. I have selected the numbers 12, 2, and two in Chinese, otherwise known as 二, as for me, this painting shows some of the 12 different animals in the chinese zodiac. In the middle of the piece, is an ox, the second animal in the zodiac, which is my zodiac sign, so I have decided to incorporate these 3 number into my piece.
Some of the shapes I have included in my piece include upside down triangles with lines through them, and wheels. The triangles symbolise the earth element, and as I am born in 2009, my specific ox is an earth ox. The wheel symbolises the zodiac wheel, a repeating cycle of 12 years, which each year is a different animal. The background of my painting is a brown, earthy-green colour, to show what the surroundings of the original painting used to look like before the fire came.
My numbers and shapes all consist of a red-orangey colour as it represents the fire, which slowly burns and consumes the greenery. The two different colours shown in my piece, show the contrast in colours in the original painting. To make the background, I use a sponge, and dabbed different colours on the canvas, and eventually they came to a muddy green colour. To make the shapes and numbers, I used techniques such as stencilling, and used woodblocks to print the paint onto the canvas.