Inspire 52 - Week 3. Face It Pierrot!

Face It Pierrot! - Hazel Evans 2012

Silence is golden when you can't think of a good answer.

Muhammad Ali (1942 - ), "More Than a Hero"

Okay this week is freaking me out! It's because I'm not really thinking about what I am doing, yet it seems that something is coming out. I decided to start playing with characterisation and all of a sudden something is speaking to me as I take the journey this week. So I begin this blog with the final work of art and by the end you will see where it may have started.

The image begins the blog because I want you to make of it what you will, without input from me, see it how you see it. As I said, I did not intend for it to happen like this, this is just what happened, it's only now that I realise what I have just created!

It feels really weird that this has turned out to be my Inspire this week ... but I don't have time to do another one, so here goes!

As you will see from my work and artist profile, characterisation is an area of interest that I am very passionate about, and working closely with a performance art venue as Resident Artist at Lighthouse Poole, theatricality is really starting to embed itself into my practice.

A couple of weeks ago I was messing around with a black eyeliner and illustrated a black heart on my lips, and this is where this week's piece derived from. So this afternoon I beagn to play around and create a new piece for Inspire 52 Week 3. This piece is inspired by my love for the performing arts, my life in France and my 'silence' - Ma silence ne dit pas mon accord!

I began by getting out the children's face paints that I had bought for my nieces teddy bear's pic-nic last summer, and thought it was about time to give myself a make-over! I did not know what I was going to do but I started with the black heart lips and then filled the rest of my face in with white.

It was a wonderful feeling, the cold wet brush painting on the canvas that was my face. I whitened in my face from the chin upwards, then I figured ... seems as I was 'dressing up', I may as well put on my favourite pair of eyelashes! So on when the eye lashes. I was then complete .... or was I?  I stared at myself in the mirror, blank white face with a black heart for my lips. What had I created!?



'Pierrot became an alter-ego of the artist' (1)

He who does not know how to be silent will not know how to speak.

Ausonius

I wasn't quite complete, something was missing. So I blacked up my paintbrush and blackened in my right eye. I enjoyed the feeling that I was creating a new painting, going with the flow and being in the creative moment, just 'being' and 'doing'. Before I knew it I had illustrated a crack down the middle of my face and given myself a black eye! But it wasn't until I had photographed my new painting and saw it on the computer screen that I realised what it was all about.

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.

Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948)

First of all I realised that I had transformed myself into a Pierrot like character. [Pierrot is a stock character of pantomime and Commedia dell'Arte whose origins are in the late 17th-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne] (1).  I love this Black and White Pierrot character, it just fits perfectly with my recent black and white work - (see http://www.flickr.com/photos/hazelevans )

But despite having a Pierrot like quality to the image, it is infact not a charicature, but a self portrait. However, it doesn't represent who I am today, indeed it represents more about my life in France, where I lived during my 20s and even before that. Please make of it what you will, my interpretation rests in Silence.

                                             

Pierrot was not a fool but an avatar of the Post-Revolutionary people. (1)

This is me dressed as Pierrot aged about 10 in the 1980s - I loved this costume.

My brother is Batman and my sister a Red Indian

(I'm sure they'll love me for posting this picture out to the world!)

This piece is personal on many levels, it seems to have told me a story today, one that I am not ready to give physical words to yet, one which some of my friends know bits of and it is also a story that I have never communicated through my art yet, until today that is! I guess this is the first piece of art I have ever made about it ... I may share more one day but until then you can read the image in silence.

Wow ... that was quite intense for me! I hope next week is a bit more playful!! But I guess that is what Inspire is all about, things that come from your heart and soul. I didn't realise that this journey would lead me on quite such a personal level so early on, but I must say that I am really loving the fact that I am giving myself the time each week to dedicate to the development of my art practice through the freedom of Inspire 52. It has no agenda and that is what is so freeing about the whole project. Onwards and upwards until next week ... Who is your alter ego?

Over and out xx

(1) References taken from Wikipedia