12fp(s) - painting 14 [SOLD]

This was the first of many 'new' Film-inspired Paintings that I created as potential replacements for any paintings that sold during my solo exhibition (which ran from November 5th 2009 until January 4th 2010) at the Filmhouse cinema in Edinburgh.

I had been fascinated by the cinematography in Jean-Luc Godard's La Mepris [Contempt] for quite some time, and there were several stills featuring Brigitte Bardot that I thought would make interesting paintings (the still below for example).

...However I wasn't keen on using those stills for this painting series because, as with Painting 2 (from Aki Kaurismäki's Shadows In Paradise), I didn't like how those kinds of stills looked more like a portrait than a still image from a film. But after a bit of time researching I eventually found a pleasant Mediterranean-based film still that had an intriguing composition vaguely similar to my North By Northwest painting, and which loosely evoked a mood similar to the paintings of Edward Hopper, who is one of my favourite painters.

This was the first painting I had done in a few weeks, and I wasn't entirely sure what kind of aesthetic I wanted to achieve with it. I was changing my mind about various aspects of the painting as I went along, and I kept rushing things unnecessarily, which is rarely a good idea.
In the end I wasn't too pleased with the quality of the finished painting, however the addition of some dark ink over Bardot's character helped to draw attention away from the blotchy background (which had been really bugging me); and I think the strong aesthetic of the source film still also helped to mitigate any other issues I had.

It may not have been one of my stronger paintings (in my opinion), but apparently you learn from every mistake...