I’ve got a solo exhibition coming up at Despard Gallery, Hobart, and have been spending lots of time in the studio trying to get the paintings done. Strange Tales opens on the 10th May and will be on show until the 29th. The painting pictured above is ‘The Marriage Plot’ oil on canvas, about 5′ x 4′ (I haven’t measured them exactly yet so these number are a bit iffy), 2012. It’s named after Jeffrey Eugenides new novel of the same name.
This one has already featured on this blog, I documented the stages of its creation; it’s ‘Tiger Bride’, again oil on canvas, 2012 and about the same dimensions as The Marriage Plot, but obviously landscape format instead of portrait. It owes debts to Australian colonial art, as well as Indian miniature painting and early religious art.
Another new painting created for Strange Tales. This is ‘Cloud Altas’, named after David Mitchell’s novel, if you look closely there are small cities and boats in the clouds. This is an image that continues to haunt, two girls side by side in a boat, sky overhead, sea underneath, the occasional shadow as a shark passes underneath, joy when a fish is caught. As children my cousin Rachel and I used to take to the seas around Dover in a leaking huon pine dinghy; it leaked so much that frequently the fish we caught would swim around our legs when we pulled them into the boat.
More soon…
Helen Hopcroft: an artist's life 