Nikolai De Rham

My inspiration for my painting was Dancing Mutants by Hernando R. Ocampo. He made Dancing Mutants in 1965, using vibrant colours to make his work abstract. He was a Filipino contemporary painter, newspaper reporter, and screenwriter. Most of his paintings depict poverty however a few of them show life and happiness. Dancing Mutants look like it portrays happiness however this was done on purpose so that at first glance it looked like they were dancing and swaying but, it was actually his reaction to the horrors of the war inspired by a film he watched in which creatures mutated from the aftereffects of a nuclear bomb. Initially I thought it meant happiness, so that's what I went with and not the horrors of a war.

This led to my inspiration of my composition as when I first saw the vibrant colours and people dancing it reminded me of Sweden and the bright sunset. I go there every summer as I’m Swedish and the sunsets are always bright with warm colours. I always go to a place called Fjällbacka, it is along the coast, at night it always stays bright as even when the sun sets, the sky is still lit. The sun usually sets around 11 p.m, hence my number 11.

I put my number inside of the sun portraying it's about the sun. Most of my colours are warm except for blue which I used to make an abstract version of the Swedish flag in the background. I made the traditional house that sits by the harbour or coast of Sweden. They come in different colours but the most popular are either a light yellow or burgundy red, I thought that the burgundy red would add more contrast to my painting whereas the yellow wouldn’t have stood out as I had already used yellow in the background. I created my house on a separate piece of cardboard which I outlined, and then used pop sickle sticks to add the wooden texture of the house, I then painted it. The dimension of my painting is 27cm by 40cm.