Aurelia - Golden Girl

My Golden Girl... Aurelia

Despite the similar features to a somewhat familiar face...my portrait of Aurelia is NOT an actress. The inspiration was drawn from a photo of a captivating brunette in a crisp white blouse.

I'm first to admit I appropriate images seen in advertisement... images of beauty as defined by society. I take those images and re-make them - re-invent - re-interpret the shapes, planes and curves of a face... and make something completely new.

Although it is difficult to tell, the entire piece is gold. Hundreds of pieces of hand cut and hand affixed "mosaic" pieces - of paper. White and cream pieces of junk mail, greeting cards, holiday cards accented with foil embellishments... golden pieces, bronze, and deep browns with accents of gold. The background is painted in gold and bronze.

16x20" on canvas.  Aurelia \a(u)-re-lia\ as a girl's name is pronounced aw-REEL-yah. It is of Latin origin, and the meaning of Aurelia is "golden".

The connection between advertising and art [mine, anyway]

original ad [I found it]

An ad for Target a year ago was SO cute I hung on to it. A girl with a wistful expression and long straight hair in a cute spring dress...flowers in there somewhere.

original painting

A few weeks ago I painted a woman with long hair... and a long neck...and although I always start with a painting, my work doesn't always end up looking exactly the same [to me, anyway]. I still had that Target ad in my head. But, I didn't use it as a reference, and as someone with eidetic imagery, I didn't need it. It's not the girl from the ad.

I started the mosaic. I had drawn a lot of diverging lines, but ended up using only a few as a guide. Black, grey, white, cream... cutting all my pieces and placing them just so...

Somewhere in there, I decided on ditching flesh tones for the shadows. Gray highlights in her hair got a coating of periwinkle metallic glaze.

I found a piece of junk mail [to me, anyway] from a food bank in Israel [?] with gorgeous tones of periwinkle. That ended up being a key color, so I sorted through the "blue" box to find coordinating pieces. Nothing matchy-matchy.


What's the connection between advertising and my work? Well, for one thing, we're bombarded with images of beauty in advertising. They are the basis for the images I paint. Then, I use images from advertising to create my paper tiles.

No magazines, I use advertising that comes to me... mostly junk mail: flyers, postcards, catalog covers, advertising ephemera, fly cards, etc. Even gallery cards. 

almost done

I thought I was done. Background done. Stood back... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz bored?
Did it need something else?

I revved up that eidetic imagery and "remembered: that ad again - that original inspiration from a couple of years ago and decided to use that as a "jumping off" place. I designed and hand cut flowers. And stems. I placed them where I thought they ought to be. All the while thinking, geez this is going to look like that Target ad - busted!

But, after all - I'm no longer bored. There is no story to this image. No deeper meanings. Something beautiful that hopefully evokes an emotion. I really like it, and whaddya know, it looks NOTHING like the Target ad.

"Poppy"