Intimate Scale

"Brenda Observed"

Flashed glass, sandblasted

by Cynthia Oliver, 2006

I have more ideas than I have focus. I get a terrific concept going. I flesh it out so that image matches thought. Then once done, I shelve the whole thing. Not always, but frequently. This behavior leads me to believe that I am more connected to process than the end result. There is a great deal of thinking going on. Subconscious processing of how to bring a concept to fruition. It may look like I'm not working, but I am.

My artist friend Suzanne, has been a good resource for listening and sharing. We toss out ideas, share each others eye, thoughts and reactions. With her help, I have been able to revisit some of those projects and concepts that I've shelved. Most recently, we've discussed scale and how both of us use scale as a device to bring you in closer. We discussed what our intentions are, and mostly it's a device used to ask you to be an active participant in the experience.

When learning to paint and draw, I was taught to work big. It was not a requirement, just a suggestion that we work on large, oversized canvas in order to loosen up. After learning to work big, we could explore the scale, perhaps a different scale, that was a fit for our concept and imagery. At times, a large canvas can feel impersonal. More like something to fill a wall with, than something to tell a story with.

My desire is to draw you in. Show you on an intimate level what it is that I want to share. I want you to get close, to look closely. A small scale pulls you in and requires you to come closer, to put your face right up to the piece, to put it in your hands so that you can find the detail in the story. Like hearing a whisper, you have to hold still, and pay attention. You can feel the breath in your ear, and hear the soft words only if you pay attention. So part of my ideal is to experience and create moments of intimacy. So I am practicing my work on a smaller scale.

"Portrait of Brenda"
flashed glass, sandblasted.
by Cynthia Oliver, 2006
This desire to create work that is about an intimate connection is also informing my work with portraits. Beyond scale, I am thinking of the composition and how that influences the story being told, or the personality being exposed.

I started these drawings of Brenda several months ago. I had been working on portraits (my own and of other people), and had a few ideas for sculptural pieces that were like kaleidoscopes in that they begged the viewer to peer inside to see what was there. I thought I would put portraits in these pieces. Not of specific persons you would recognize, but images that would ask you to think about who you were looking at. These would require you to take the time to observe and hopefully entice you to want to take the time to consider what it is you are looking at.
The concept is still stewing in my head. I don't know for certain what I want to put inside of these pieces. Should they be representational images of people, individuals in specific situations. Should it be an abstracted image, but only abstracted to the degree that you know what you are seeing, but still must interpret the story it tells? I am not happy with the solutions I've gotten to so far, so will shelve the project for a while longer. But I am happy with these portraits of Brenda.

I wanted to post the flashed glass portraits of Brenda. In these portraits, I wanted to describe her thoughtfulness, her internal world of thinking before acting, and her great honesty which she shares easily, but carefully. I hope I succeeded.