Liberating Lawrence 2009
by Janice Thwaites
Acrylic on canvas
|
h 139 x w 95 cm h 54.7 x w 37.4 in |
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Description
LIBERATING LAWRENCE 2009
I decided to make two separate paintings from scaled up drawings of life model Lawrence. The drawings were not very good, but the subject was. Lawrence posed emerging from a wooden frame. It could easily have been a window.
The paintings were acrylic on canvas. The figures painted life size. The frames were painted surrounded with ivy.
Artist Tim Collard had come to stay. He is a good critic. We looked at the paintings. I was not convinced by them. Tim thought they were flat. The figures did not appear to be emerging through the window frames.
In an instant the idea to literally liberate the figures came to me. I took one of the paintings from the wall and carefully started to cut the figure from the canvas. Not quite what Tim was expecting, or me for that matter. Tim took some photographs. The canvas was left with an empty, Lawrence shaped hole. The figure was free to have a new life away from the canvas.
The two paintings would now become a performance artwork. Lawrence would be taken to the beach, out in the car, under the car, in a bed. He was photographed in a trashed empty house. Lawrence became a Pieta, influenced by Sam Taylor-Wood's film “Pieta” 2001.
Lawrence was photographed and filmed in various locations.
The images were also reattached to the original paintings with some interesting results. The image shown with this text is one of the reattached pieces and was shown at “Ten Days at the Laundry” Exhibition in Winchester in October 2010, along with two images of Lawrence on his travels.
Measurements: Canvas 139cm x 95cm
Janice Thwaites