Well this a strange vision isn’t it. I’m wearing a pair of antique glasses and have my hair pushed back to be a little more like the artist whose history I’m working with. Part of my job is to embody her a little. To get as close to her as I can. My vision is strange too – the glasses allow me to see in some degree of focus but it’s a bit like looking through a bottle end! The effect is other worldly and disorientating.
I’m thinking about how I might source objects for the assemblage element of this project. This week these beautifully preserved glasses circa 1930 showed up in the post. Eagerly awaited as “being like” the glasses the subject of our project, British artist Felicia Browne, wore, but quickly found that they have larger frames and are darker than those in the photographs we have of her in the public domain. I was working with a description of Felicia at art college by a fellow student in which horn-rimmed glasses are mentioned.
So while the frames are darker than those we see Felicia wearing in the 1930s they may possibly be more like the pair she wore at art college. It’s important to do this kind of preliminary research ahead of our more active stages in which we’ll paint and assemble the work.
You can read more about the project on some of our earlier posts in Through An Artist’s Eye.
And while the farmer had a wife, the farmer had a life.
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