Posts Tagged: carnival
Colombina
Colombina
6″x6″ (15×15 cm) – oil on aluminum panel
Colombina in Italian means “little dove.” She is a character in the Commedia dell’Arte, a mistress to Harlequin, a clever and funny maid-servant and a wife to Pierrot. She is often the only intelligent person on stage. Venetian carnival mask of the same name reflects heavy eye makeup play character Colombina wears on stage.
This little painting is the 5th in my series Phantasmagoria. I painted it in 6”x6” size as it was meant for Randy Higbee’s 6”Squared show in December 2015, but it never made it there. I had to travel and live overseas for 2 months to be with my family during my father’s illness and passing. The little half-finished Colombina sat on my easel and waited for me to return to her. She was a little trickster indeed, it took me some time to work out her intricacies, curlicues, ribbons and gold.
All That Glitters…
All That Glitters
6″x6″ (15×15 cm) – oil on aluminum panel
… isn’t Gold.
Of course this is the main idea behind the title and the painting.
Sometime when I am long gone, and my paintings would command exorbitant prices, and museums would be fighting for them (dreams are allowed 🙂 !!), then art historians will be scratching their heads about what did I mean by this image and coming up with their usual nonsense. To spare them this awful fate, I’ll explain :).
This is a Venetian carnival mask called Medico Della Peste, translated Plaque Doctor. Back then in medieval time they began to realize that medics needs some kind of protection when attending the sick, and a mask of this configuration was used cover a face. A scary thought! Centuries later it transformed into a carnival mask, if a little macabre.
The draped dark silk and upturned goblets hopefully add to the dark carnival mood. But there is more to this fabric, this is a blue scarf that I wore as a teenager back in Russia in Kishinev. God only knows how I still have it decades later and continents away, but I do. So when I wanted blue for color composition, I remembered it. Almost every painting I paint has a hidden meaning or a little joke that I keep for myself, for my private entertainment and chuckle. This blue scarf is a reference to my own self in a different time and a different world, when I knew frighteningly little and possibilities were so big.
All That Glitters is the 4th painting for my series Phantasmagoria.