Outside/Inside

[Mary Ann Archibald]

This is absolutely wonderful! There are so many layers to it, I feel like I could look at it for hours and discover new questions and meaning in it.

[Alexandra Tyng]

Thank you all for responding!

I think you all mentioned major themes I was exploring in this. But you came up with some specific metaphors that I hadn't thought of. Maybe they were at the back of my mind, but not articulated. For me, there is nothing so deadly to creativity than thinking out every last detail intellectually before starting to paint. I only knew it had to be a certain way, in a certain setting, and then the idea developed intuitively as I was working it out and even while I was painting it.

Allan, your description of youth vs. middle age is very much what I was thinking of when I first started thinking about this. In fact, it is behind the whole painting. Although I hear my female friends talk about mid-life, there is something peculiar to a man's life which I wanted to express here. Maybe it is a set of emotions, subtly (or not so subtly) different from women's feelings.

Molly, it is interesting to hear your viewpoint. I was aware of the symbolism of the lighthouse when I thought of it as a setting, but the actual words "light" and "enlightenment" did not occur to me. I was thinking of elevated perspectives and the tower as a symbol of masculinity. But what you say is absolutely true and very interesting. It is also a positive spin on the youth-midlife theme. Do women experience midlife differently? I feel very much as you describe, and that makes me wonder whether the overlaying of my experiences on my brother's experiences produces another "layer," so to speak.

SB, thank you for the link. No words needed. (I wonder why I talk so much!)

Mary Ann, thank you! If someone wants to keep looking at a painting, that makes me very happy.

Thomasin, thanks for all you said. I like your thoughts. The layers of glass were both fun and challenging to use because they had several different functions:
1) linking layers by allowing one to see through them
2) separating layers
3) reflecting things inside and outside

As usual you brought up some good points about the painting process. Although the painting is quite large and looks more painterly in real life, you are right that it is more "controlled" than usual. I think I felt this way from the beginning of the process, because the lighthouse was so difficult to get right with all its angles, windows, reflections, and just the general perspective of a ten-sided tower. I was also very conscious of correcting for distortion. Perspective issues are very important to me and it bugs me when something looks a little off. (It doesn't have to be painted meticulously, it just has to be correctly spaced and structurally correct.) There were so many elements to put together from disparate sources that the actual process of painting i.e. the brushstrokes, the feeling, etc., broke into sections more than being an entire whole, as it would have been if I were looking at a complete scene and responding to it. In other words, the things you are referring to happened while i was painting the two figures and the area immediately around them, and the water and scene behind him, etc., because that is the way I worked on the painting. I was aware that the whole panting had a more controlled feeling than usual. This "riding without a bit" is something I have been working on for years. I would not want to suddenly let go, but rather let go gradually. If I am to do more portraits that have these complex elements I'll be working towards this goal.

[Enzie Shahmiri]

Alex, what a beautiful painting! I love everything about it, especially your brothers (older version) reflective look. I noticed the two sailboats in the distance and it evoked a sens of something that has passed. To me it seems your brother couldn't wait to grow up into manhood and now he seems to be missing something. He is not really looking out at the scenery but seems to look at something within. Maybe reflecting on his life?

What was your brother's reaction to the painting. Did you tell him what you had in mind before he posed? It's really a great piece....

[SB Wang]

http://lightlounge.org/articles/outside/index.html

http://english.hanban.edu.cn/english/33934.htm

"When I grew up,


Homesickness was a small tomb,


With me outside, and my mother inside; "

This is one of the most-famous poems written by Yu Guangzhong, a renowned writer from Taiwan. Entitled "Homesickness", the oft-quoted poem vividly depicts the flesh and blood relations between people on both sides of the Taiwan Straits.


http://images.google.com/images?um=1...=Search+Images

[Alexandra Tyng]

Enzie, I like your interpretation very much. I was definitely thinking about inner and outer worlds, about extraversion and introversion, and how they correspond to different periods in life as well as different personality orientations. Your observation that he is not really looking at the view but reflecting on something within is exactly what I wanted to show so I am glad I got it across.

My brother does really like the painting. He calls it "metaphysical." I did tell him what I was thinking of, and he helped me put it together by posing and getting photo references, etc. Although I tried to explain my ideas, I'm not sure I totally got it across to him, but that's usually the way when you have an idea in your mind and your attempts to communicate it are not that great because it can't really be described except in the form of the painting itself

SB, thank you again for the other links. The first one uncannily echoes the "metaphysical" theme. What is inside and what is outside are all part of the same thing. The microcosm and macrocosm are structurally the same. The inner world is really so much greater than us and yet it can be contained in our mind. The second link is also relevant. We have many losses and separations as we grow older, and more chance to reflect on them. The interesting thing is that he is actually on an island, looking at the mainland.

[Enzie Shahmiri]

Thanks Alex! I love to hear what the ideas of the artist are when they are developing a painting.

[Heidi Maiers]

Alexandra -
The painting is absolutely gorgeous, but I had quite a different initial interpretation of it before I read that it was a double portrait.

Seeing the similarity in the two, I first assumed it was a father/son portrait. Thinking perhaps the father is guarded (in an iron cage) and does not let anyone get close to him, including the son who is pressed against the glass and longing to get in. The father pays no attention to his gesturing as he is deep in thought about other things. They spend a lot of time together, but are not close.

Ok, I know this is WAY off - but it's interesting how different people can read such different meaning into the same painting. Interpretation is an interesting topic.

Now that I know they are of the same person, of course that changes my entire view of the painting.

[Carlos Ygoa]

Alex,
I

[Mary Ann Archibald]

[QUOTE=Carlos Ygoa]Alex,
and the lighthouse...it

[Ilaria Rosselli Del Turco]

Alex, I am also very late in commenting. Normally I try to post straight away, but when, like in this case, I miss out on that, it is difficult to add anything as all the posts are so well articulated.
I have the utmost admiration for tackling all the members of your family in portraits as you did. We have seen your father, your mother, your husband and children, and now your brother. With each of them things seem to get deeper and deeper.

In fact I am late in adding this post because I somehow sense that this works are there because you just NEED to do them, almost regardless of the result, and though you generously share your process with us, in fact I find them so personal and honest that I do not dare to judge them.
As you said, you have an idea which you can only convey in painting and you explore it until very deep down. Though the scene is set in an open space one has the feeling that actually we are somewhere within, in another dimension, an internal one, where the space turns into an illusion as soon as we learn that the time is an illusion too.
I love this painting, I find it so intense that at this point if you went on and painted over the younger figure the strenght of its former presence could still be felt.
Ilaria