Woman with Fiery Curls

mixed media

by Emily
Grade 12
Ross Sheppard School

Teacher: Peg McPherson

Artist’s Statement:

This piece was created based on the prompting theme of fire. When I began this project I was having trouble deciding how I would represent fire. I began flipping through a Gustav Klimt book, and found inspiration in its pages. Specifically, the idea for my project stemmed from his pieces “The Three Ages of Woman” and “Goldfish”.  My piece is a compilation of different mediums, the woman is done in watercolour and pencil, her hair is done with acrylic, and the background is done with a mixture of watercolour, chalk, pastels and acrylic. To begin with, I left the woman in my painting without a face; in an attempt to bring the viewers entire focus to her fiery locks. The piece did not seem to flow, and in the end I decided to give the woman facial features, to tie the entire piece together. Suprisingly, this added to the focus on her hair, tying the piece together and strengthening the conveyance of the theme, fire. Creating this piece reinforced the importance of patience and time-management in the artistic process. It took me many sittings to complete this project, each time I carefully added another layer of paint, or shading to the woman’s body; slowly working towards my finished result.