The Self-Isolation Residency 4th June 2020: Day 67

'Idle Hands Series, No:3, Adam', acrylic on paper, 2020, Antony Clarkson, £200.00 + P&P  #artistsupportpledge

I've finally managed to complete the next painting in my 'Idle Hands Series' this is No:3 'Adam'. Having created the first 2 paintings in this series using a couple of sketches of my left hand that I had produced on previous occasions I decided to expend the concept behind the series further to give it greater depth for consideration. I mentioned in my previous posts that I had some other ideas which I wished to explore in this series of paintings, 'Adam' is the first painting in which I have deliberately tried to do something a bit different. 

One of the things that had crossed my mind as I worked on the previous two paintings was that it may well be difficult to come up with many new poses for my left hand which don't demand the use of a 'prop' of some kind; a cup. a brush, or a book for instance. With this thought in mind I began to consider where else I could take inspiration form for new, passive, poses for my left hand. Actually the answer came very quickly and easily as it was suggested to me by my last 'Idle Hands' painting. When I looked back on the previous painting I was reminded of Michelangelo's famous fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, particularly the section known as The Creation of Adam. God's right hand reaches out towards Adam with a huge amount of energy and dynamism, where as Adam 'left' hand (below right) is languid and limp in the extreme. To me it suggests that this image is the moment before God puts life into Adam, thus at this point Adam's body is just a lump of lifeless 'clay'. I immediately realised that this was perhaps the ultimate reference for these paintings, in fact having come upon this idea so quickly it may now be virtually impossible to come up with another equally good 'pose'.

And so I have 'borrowed' this pose from Michelangelo, I didn't want to copy his painting in any way and so as previously I posed my own hand to mimic 'Adam's' hand and worked directly from that. This of course allowed for me to use my own lighting and to also turn the pose through 90 degrees for my painting; this reorientation of the pose is very important to another aspect of my piece. 

I did mention earlier in this post that I actually had a couple of ideas to expend the concept behind these paintings. The first of these is obviously the 'borrowing' of poses from other artists works, but the second one is something that ties into a lot of my current work and that is the idea of expressing 'sculptural' or at less 3D works in painting and drawing. This isn't simply the idea of making something look lifelike, it's much more about how sculptures were posed and photographed for catalogues in the 60s & 70s. I want these works to suggest that they are in some way 3 dimensional in the same way that sculptors like Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth did when presenting their sculpture photographically. this idea is part of a larger body of my work which I will talk about in more detail in future posts, but for now it is perhaps enough to say that it is this reference to sculpture that inspired me to reorient the hand to be suggestive of a piece of sculpture.

If you are interested in this piece it is being added to my #artistsupportpledge catalogue with immediate effect, please contact me either through this website of direct message me through Facebook:
 
'Idle Hands No:3, Adam', acrylic on paper, 29.5 x 42 cm, 2020, Antony Clarkson, £200 plus shipping.