Rives Granade Essay
Bruce Richards (Visiting Painting)
#45 Rives Granade (Response Painting)
In contemplating the type of response I would give to the painting presented, a number of options sifted through my head. The painting itself was a genre of still life, a simple motif of objects, mostly pink and black in color, set against a light teal blue background. No shadows present, but not abstract – the painting implied a certain narrative and I felt like it was trying to entice me to be led in a very specific direction by this narrative. This I naturally resisted – sort of.
I decided to respond to the things in the painting that most interested me: the colors, the formal arrangement, and the painting style. That is, I did my best to ignore the narrative aspects. However, I couldn’t shake the fact that to me the still life was referring to something nefarious, and an image of a gun kept coming into my mind; possibly a Hollywood ploy. In any case, I wanted to take the painting out of the realm of painting and then put it back again – if that makes any sense?
Therefore, I took a photo of the painting with my iPhone. I then found a 3D model of a pistol on the web and downloaded it. I uploaded the iPhone painting pic to my computer and then mapped the picture of the painting onto the 3D model gun. I then printed the 3D model picture out and used it to paint from, doing my best not to recreate the colors of the original painting so much as the colors that were in the print out. In this way my painting incorporates the old painting into it in a literal and also abstract way while at the same time maintaining and pushing forward the narrative quality of the still life.