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Alexandra Tyng · 05-12-2007, 02:57 PM

Thanks, Ngaire, Lacey, Tom, Anna, Linda and Allan! I can't tell you how much your affirmation means to me. For some reason--I guess because I like joyful rather than brooding or moody subject matter, and because I'm new to this-- I feel it's tricky to paint what I'm drawn to paint in this genre without being corny or too sentimental, and thus I'm really nervous about how people will react to any figurative piece I do.

Actually, I didn't quite mean that I'm adverse to symbolism. It's just that, in my figurative work (and this is just emerging for me since I haven't done many yet) my use of symbolism seems more intuitive, or maybe a natural product of the idea that forms around the composition. In this painting I was thinking about the way two musicians play together, taking cues from each other. My kids were 16 and 13 when I took a bunch of reference photos for this. It was the one and only time their music teachers could get them together to perform a duet at their music school and it was my only opportunity to watch them practice together. As many of you might guess from some of my portraits, I love music and musicians playing.

I got the idea of the angle when I walked though the door to the music room at night and saw the foreshortened curve of the harp silhouetted against the dark hallway wall. It was so dramatic! (So, Allan, in answer to your question, this is in my house.) My daughter was practicing,so I asked my son to play with her for a while. I started working on this several years ago, but I was not completely happy with the color, so I reworked most of it using real observation of the room at night and digital photos taken recently.

05-12-2007, 02:57 PM	#8
Alexandra Tyng UNVEILINGS MODERATOR Juried Member Joined: May 2005 Location: Narberth, PA Posts: 2,485	Thanks, Ngaire, Lacey, Tom, Anna, Linda and Allan! I can't tell you how much your affirmation means to me. For some reason--I guess because I like joyful rather than brooding or moody subject matter, and because I'm new to this-- I feel it's tricky to paint what I'm drawn to paint in this genre without being corny or too sentimental, and thus I'm really nervous about how people will react to any figurative piece I do. Actually, I didn't quite mean that I'm adverse to symbolism. It's just that, in my figurative work (and this is just emerging for me since I haven't done many yet) my use of symbolism seems more intuitive, or maybe a natural product of the idea that forms around the composition. In this painting I was thinking about the way two musicians play together, taking cues from each other. My kids were 16 and 13 when I took a bunch of reference photos for this. It was the one and only time their music teachers could get them together to perform a duet at their music school and it was my only opportunity to watch them practice together. As many of you might guess from some of my portraits, I love music and musicians playing. I got the idea of the angle when I walked though the door to the music room at night and saw the foreshortened curve of the harp silhouetted against the dark hallway wall. It was so dramatic! (So, Allan, in answer to your question, this is in my house.) My daughter was practicing,so I asked my son to play with her for a while. I started working on this several years ago, but I was not completely happy with the color, so I reworked most of it using real observation of the room at night and digital photos taken recently.