While researching for my dissertation, I came across a critic who wrote of the interiors of artist Rosson Crow: ….these places lack any structural coherence necessary to labelling them as true ‘interiors’. Each scene offers an amalgam of collaged perspectives, the effects of which can be unsettling. –TD Neil, 2006, p.83 This is relevant to what I am attempting to do with my current interiors, which are composed from different elements from various images of rooms put together in a single composition, and combined with confusingly-arranged walls to create a disjointed and surreal appearance. An example of this can be seen in one of my most recent paintings, A Figment of Paint, the final version of which I am currently painting onto a large canvas. In this painting I have combined disjointed staircases with zig-zag stairs, with partially hovering chairs that have parts missing from them, and a disembodied door under which a pool of green paint is escaping, as if warning the interior that it is merely an illusory scene created by material objects, and could dissolve at any minute if somebody chose to alter it. This combination of surreal and bizarre objects is designed to create a space with a feeling of theatrical falseness, and to create a sense of unfamiliarity in a category of space that would normally be everyday.
My tutors have suggested that I look at Patrick Caulfield as an example of an artist who paints simplified images with limited colours, and hihlights specific points of his compositions, either with colour or pattern which is excluded in the rest of the painting. The idea of me replicating this in my own paintings is that I think more carefully about my compositions, and either make my paintings patterned all over and multicoloured, as in the Lavenham interior painting – or greatly limit the colours and patterned areas for striking and simple compositions, as in my second version of the Lavenham staircase painting.
I will experiment with this idea, and to demonstrate the kind of images I could produce to create a more empty and unreal effect, I have included some examples of relevant Patrick Caulfield images.
I find Interior with a Picture interesting because of the contrast between the patterned wallpaper and the plain blocks of colour used to indicate the walls and top of the stairs, which is also juxtaposed with the great detail with which the picture on the wall has been painted. I think that these differences give the image a strange and slightly surreal appearance.
Another interesting image is Caulfield’s Second Glass of Whisky (1992) which captures an unseen interior in night-time blackness, giving the feeling of sitting alone in a room in the middle of the night, which also creates a dreamlike atmosphere. The white squares on the black walls suggest moonlight coming through a nearby window.
