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I’ve recently been reading Greek mythology after my painting tutor said that a few of my paintings reminded them of some of the creatures. Although I’d like to do some mythology paintings, I want to do it in a nonconventional way. Because I’m painting from imagination, I’d like to just read and reflect on the mythology stories and see what images appear in my mind. See from my series of paintings called The Inhabitants of Nacre, featuring Mikros and Bios, Detritus, and Capsid – they have the appearance of mythical creatures. When I was painting these I was picturing the inside of an empty shell and imagining what beings could inhabit the empty space. After Painting them I started to research what creatures actually live inside a shell, and I started to look in to different microorganisms. Remarkably the names of them sound similar to the names of the greek gods!
I have a habit of giving miscellaneous objects personalities and names, and yes people do fine this unsettling even my fiancé, who I think was worried about my mental health when I decided I wanted to keep a slice of a tangerine because it had a siamese twin and he had to wait until it went mouldy to throw it out. I think my attached with 3D objects may be why sculptural work comes more naturally to me, opposed to painting. But I think I’ve found a way to apply my natural sculptural process to painting. By picturing some obscure objects I’ve studied and moulding them together with my imagination as I paint, sometimes this happens as a reaction of a mark I make on the canvas.
I’ve titled this series The Inhabitants of Nacre for those of you that don’t know Nacre is the name for the inner layer of the shell, also more commonly known as mother of peal, possessing an iridescent and metallic quality. A surface that resembles the silver gilded canvases that I often work on, some Nacre will have sheen of blueish colours that is similar to the blue paint that I am currently addicted to working with. This resemblance of my work to this mother of pearl is what brought me to name the series The Inhabitants of Nacre. The inhabitants bit is referring to the microorganisms, witch I have used to named the life forms of my paintings. I have only three paintings in this series currently but I have no doubt that they will led me on to more paintings relating to this subject matter and new method of painting.
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Dottie-may Aston 