Posted by gs531
20 June 2022
PAINTING – ISOLATION: A DARK PARADISE BY MIKE KERINS
I painted this picture early on in the pandemic, as I sort to escape from the confinement of lockdown.
Blue Spaces for me can be a part of any land or seascape: lakes, streams or forests, the atmosphere of such places offering a feeling of inner peace, something I think we all crave. So, on being confined to the house, other than for exercise, I found myself having to look inwardly, drawing on my own experience and memories of such places, which is how this painting began to evolve, a way of finding a sense of relief and escape from the stress of daily life.
I try to keep various appropriate artists in mind when I paint, perhaps synthesizing a little of what I like, the trees were a little David Hockney, the vegetation maybe reminiscent of Odilon Redon and the glowing moon Atkinson Grimshaw. As the painting progressed and coalesced, the mood became a little dark, which I suppose echoed the circumstances of the time in which it was created, yet having to wander the inner landscape of my mind, informed by memories of ‘blue spaces’ helped me to create a sense of place, located within my own imagination, magical and mysterious, yet encapsulating the isolation many had now begun to feel.
I like the theatrical, the artificiality conjured up by the stage lighting of a pantomime or a play, the otherworldly inspired by the natural, something which I strived for in the painting – the colour and boldness of German Expressionism an influence. I needed some sort of contrast to the blues and greens of the night forest, and so remembering the red lipstick kisses I’d once seen covering Oscar Wilde’s grave in Pere La Chaise cemetery, Paris, I transformed some of the leaves in the undergrowth, into the dark red silent mouths of those unfortunate victims of Covid – 19, placing a 17th Century Plague doctor, that felt more fairy tale than actual, to the left of the scene, which visually and metaphorically felt perfect.
The painting is still rather dark, but then we are all living in dark times, but atmospherically reflects a feeling of calm and otherworldliness, as if a spell had been cast. Hopefully I have captured something of our inner landscape, an echo or interpretation of what blue spaces mean to us all – I hope you like it.
