This is a painting of a skeletal specimen of conjoined twins at Philadelphia's Mütter Museum. It's always a very confusing thing, to be confronted with medical exhibits like this. They certainly have entertaining shock value. Then I think of what a sad delivery it must have been for the poor parents. Then I feel a certain reverence for the sacrifice they all made- the parents, the doomed fetus, and the doctor carefully preparing this specimen- to allow this skeleton to become part of an enduring body of knowledge. And after all that goes in at the eyes, churns through my brain, and comes out at the brush, I know the painting won't be judged by any of those things, it will just have to be a good painting.
Since you saw that I've already introduced this painting and print into my etsy shop. You can see that I sometimes cheat a little, and stockpile blogposts, especially when it comes to works in progress. I should re-title them as works that were at one time in progress!
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8 comments:
Your imagination is incredible. I do believe you should donate your brain to science, post-mortem. If you did it pre-mortem, it would make things difficult at home.
this is very interesting. I am glad you wrote about your take on these things...it helps to understand you motivation on a deeper level!
I would have the same feelings and thoughts if I see it too. Your paintings are absolutely great, and your thoughts on them really help too!
very interesting and I love the emotional tag you added to it. It does make me look at this in a different light.
Yes, your explanation cleared things up for me as I had thought this was something that came out of your head. Nicely executed.
It's such a treat to hear an artist talk about her work. So many times I've looked at art, and tried to see it from the artists eye, to know what they were thinking, and of course could only see it with my own. Thanks.
My ex-husband's mother gave birth to twins. The first one delivered was the healthy plump body of a girl with no head, just some sinewy strings of tissue comprising what should have been her neck. The second baby, Alice was born small and suffered cerebral palsy as a result of her long difficult delivery (at home). The family used humor to deal with it. They would tease Alice that she had eaten the baby's head while inside their mother. It's grisly, but I thought you would understand and possibly appreciate.
This is sad and fancinating at the same time. I can only imagine the heartache the parents felt!
Thanks for commenting on my memorial blog, my mom used to call her cig's "her best friend"! It breaks my heart, I used to smoke
(college) but when I started teaching, I quit.
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