The piece I have chosen is a modern acrylic
painting by Alison Erika Forde. The exhibition is called the tallest of tales.
I was drawn to the piece as it is a very playful and imaginative piece of work.
The content of the painting looks very surreal, depicting a conga line of
different animals, with swapped heads. This in turn creates a very surrealist,
almost dream like image, mimicking in my opinion being in an intoxicated state
when your awareness is impaired and everything becomes a blur.
Naturally each animal is prey or predator, but in
this image the roles are reversed, with emphasis on them having a good time and
even though each animal is linked to each other there is no food chain in this.
The marks used describe the vibrant mood of the animals and party. There is no
outline on the creature’s only blurry lines, which create a distorted form and
again create the drunk like state, which helped to create fun imagery. There is
shading on the animals, which helps to define features, using simple brush
strokes. These help to describe the texture of the animal’s fur and skin, which
enable me to imagine more easily what the animal would feel like. This method
of working is very similar to the way I have work in class.
I liked the composition of the piece as it was done
over four separated images; however the conga line is joined through each image
creating a nice balance to the image. It created a kind of mockery of the food
chain and it was almost like a set of photographs, again looking back at a good
time. The scale of the piece was quite big, but it did help to create that long
conga line, in this almost childlike image.
