Monday, January 31, 2011

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.

1 comment:

  1. Jim really wonderful! I just had some photos done by a professional photographer. Maybe that would be a good idea for your work. You know professional photographers play with the light. And really may get some different shots? I love this new blog! I hope everyone gets to see it.

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