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An Invitation to Gaze

A virtual exhibition of paintings by Hannah Barnes
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This blog is a visual, on-line record of my art work and my personal research (guided simply by what I like) into art history and contemporary art.

Most of my paintings on display here are for sale. If you are interested in purchasing a work,
please e-mail me at hannahsjb@live.co.uk

Many of my works posted here are Digital Finger Paintings. For this reason the images have been watermarked. Please, no unauthorized reproductions: If you would like to use any of the images of my works that you see here (or elsewhere) please contact me, I am always happy to help if I can.

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Tuesday, 20 July 2010

The Boy from Louisiana (carried the moon in his eyes)






















(Above) The Boy from Louisiana (carried the moon in his eyes)
A mixed media painting (indian ink, watercolour crayon, poster paint) on paper.
12.5cm x 15cm
July 2010

This painting started as a study after a thumbnail photograph that I happened to find on the Internet of a black boy wearing a check jumper. To me, the boy looked as if he was from Mississippi. In a conversation with Sarah Howgate*, the New York portrait painter Alex Katz talks about how people from different countries, different cities, have a very distinctive and recognisable style or look. To me, the boy in this thumbnail had to be from one of the southern American states. So, he became “The Boy from Louisiana” and then with the blue ground in the painting suggesting a mythical midnight sky, his eyes seemed to echo, or carry, the moon, hence the final title. Titles are indeed great fun. They are not at all necessary but they do provide an opportunity to tell a story (often about how the painting came into being), to offer meanings, and using a periphrasis like this adds a poetry that is evocative of folk tales.


*In conversation with Alex Katz by Sarah Howgate, in Alex Katz Portraits, published the National Portrait Gallery Publications, St Martin’s Place, London, on the occasion of Alex Katz Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, May - Sept, 2010.