24 March 2008
Bodies changed into new forms
In nova fert animus mutatas dicere formas corpora.
Now look what’s happened. I’ve started re reading the Metamorphoses of Ovid, translated by A D Melville. I really wish I could read them in latin and wish even more that Richard Burton had recorded a talking book of them all so I could listen while I’m engraving.
Isn’t Metamorphosis a spark idea ? It’s something I’ve been gripped by since I was a child and got me into my Changelings series. This series of engravings and paintings is a Dream Bestiary, based loosely on those 12th. century bestiaries where most of the creatures were made up. That and those wonderful theatrical spaces that Goya made in his Disparates and Capriccios .
Mutation, shape shifting, play acting. There is something very erotic about the friction between memory and anticipation. What I now have to do is work on the portable form that this work will take. Books, boxes pop ups and theatres .. watch this space.
(1) 26 March 2008 at 4:06 pm
shug
Have you seen Scottish artist John Bellany’s Bestiary?
(2) 26 March 2008 at 4:59 pm
doug
No - but will check. I really like his painting, he came in for an afternoon at Gainsborough’s House print workshop when I was working there in Sudbury. I’ll check it out and post something on the blog. Thanks, my Philosophical Best Friend.