Monday, January 31, 2011

THE TERRACE CAFE AT NIGHT AND BOY ARTIST



THE TERRACE CAFÉ AT NIGHT

The first diorama is of Van Gogh’s The Terrace Café at Night.  Although this photo looks like a standard two dimensional painting it is actually a three dimensional diorama (size: 2.5 ft wide, 3 ft high and 8 in deep).  This is one of my smallest dioramas and is used to set the scene for the following much larger dioramas






I decided to place Van Gogh himself at a table on the terrace and the following diorama shows him sitting among some of his friends.  It is painted on the sides and back so you can see inside and some of the outside of the café never before seen.  This is a big and heavy one (size 4 X 6 X 1 ft.) and as shown it sits on a dolly for ease in moving and turning.





The view is the back side of the diorama which represents the interior of the café and a little of the outside wall.



BOY ARTIST IN HIS STUDIO


This is a painting is probably by Rembrandt of his first pupil Gerald Dou who was 14 years old.  Others suggest that this is a painting of Rembrandt as a boy.  My dioramic interpretation includes features not present on Rembrandt’s canvas but are possible when rendered in dioramic form (size: 3 ft wide, 3.5 ft high and 8 in deep).

As you can see this diorama sits on top of Van Gogh’s “The Potato Eaters”.





Another View of the Boy Artist

This camera angle gives a better picture of the easel and the door to the outside.  .




                           
Boy Artist with Door Open

As you can see the door actually opens to reveal a view of the outside with a windmill which was painted from a drawing by Rembrandt of his grandfather’s windmill.




Who was the Boy Artist Painting?

The easel stands out from the confines of the diorama by at least 12 inches.  The entire diorama is 3 ft wide, 3.5 ft high and 8 in deep.  Also it is possible to find out who or what the young artist was painting.  It appears to be me.  So this is a diorama of a boy painting a picture of me painting a picture of him.

INTRODUCTION TO DIORAMIC PAINTING

Some of you out there in internet land know that I am an artist of sorts.  But some of you don’t always understand what my art represents.  So by way of explanation: many of my paintings are dioramic recreations of famous paintings.  These dioramas have been cut, carved and painted to recreate the original oil painting in a new and different three dimensional fashion.  The artists who painted these original master works used the principles and techniques of perspective to create three dimensional effects on a two dimensional surface of canvas.  In contrast, my dioramic recreations actually have the third dimension of depth which gives them a special feeling not present in the originals. 

In addition, most of my recreations have some alteration such as our dog, Pheobe, has replaced the original small dog in the painting. An example of one of my dioramas is show above and described below.

THE MARRIAGE OF GIOVANNI ARNOLIFINI AND JEANNE CENAMI

Jan Van Eyck painted this picture of the marriage of Giovanni and Jeanne in their bridal chamber. The painting is both record of the marriage and a marriage certificate. The images of the 'witness', one of which was the artist, are reflected in the convex mirror on the wall. Above the mirror is the flourished script normally used for legal documents which stated in the original painting: “Johannes de Eyck fuit hic” (Jan van Eyck was here). In my diorama this has been changed to read “James H. Clark fuit hic”. This diorama is a big one: 5 ft high, 3.5 ft wide and 1 ft deep.