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| 'Hope Falls/hope falls...' 100x70cms oil on canvas |
My third painting ‘ Hope Falls/hope falls....’ is now complete and is a very different take on
the novel, Paul Auster’s ‘City of Glass’.
The idea came from words: a line from the Bible quoted in City of Glass,
about the supposed scale of the Tower of Babel, where a man would have to walk
for 3 days to escape its shadow. How far
could you go if you walked continuously for three days from Manhattan and where
would you end up. ?
I calculated 200 miles and found 2 stand-out candidates in
upstate New York, with fantastic names that link to the novel. I plumped for Hope Falls, (the blue spot in the painting) because of the echoes
with the despair and disintegration of the detective, Quinn. Truthville is the next painting.
I liked the idea of
positioning Manhattan centrally on the bottom edge and making something very
small, very powerful. The idea was to
have the shadow of the tower over the map/landscape ending at Hope Falls and
this was painted several times but never looked right. A consequence of repainting this shadow and scrubbing
/removing it, was a rich residue of intense red that suggested a bleeding
wound.
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| 'Hope Falls/hope falls...' Detail |
I can’t take credit for this- when I showed the painting to
the group from our painting holiday, they pointed out the quality and mystery
of the red stain and fiercely told me to leave it alone! After several more attempts painting the
shadow I realised they were right, and the tower is in the painting in a more
subtle way. What do you think?
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| 'City of Glass 3' 150x120cms oil on canvas |
After my unsuccessful attempts to
introduce the tower/shadow in ‘Hope Falls/hope falls...’ I was determined to
make it work in this painting. The only question was how graphic and explicit
it was going to be. The ziggurat shape
comes from the mythology of the tower and the Paramount building in New
York. Central Park becomes a window and
the building appears ablaze....
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