It is a rare thing for me to have the time to sit and think about the visual decisions I have made on a work before it is shown in public, but I am doing that now.
There is no doubt in my mind that Stanley Kubrick was a genius. He was both literally-with an IQ of 200-and visually a genius. When the opportunity came to me via
Julie Zarate to make a painting based on a film of a particular director for the show called '
Director's Cut', of which I hope my work will be accepted and subsequently shown in the next few weeks, I could not pass it up. Kubrick has always struck a visual chord with me. From my first glimpse of
2001: A Space Odyssey to
Eyes Wide Shut, no other director, has pulled me back into thinking or dreaming about a work past the actions of the characters in the film. At first, I chose to do a scene from
Barry Lyndon, because every scene in that movie is a painting, and it not well known, but I grew bored with it, because I couldn't come up with a solution compositionally that would adhere to the nature of the film. In any case, I scrapped that idea.
Debating about it in ZBHO one night,
Ron McLeroy asked me what my favorite movie of Kubrick's was and I didn't hesitate in naming "
The Shining." I gave my reasons against it, that I didn't want to paint Jack Nicholson, because it was kitsch at this point, there are any number of paintings, drawings and photographs of Jack's character when he says "Here's Johnny." It was too iconic. Ron suggested I paint the twins, and I heartily agreed, but I also knew that they could not be the entire focus of the painting, as again, there were plenty of paintings, drawings, and photographs of them already. So without having seen the film in a couple of years I picked up on the most memorable parts of the film to me that were visually interesting. The moment when Wendy first discovers what her husband has been up to when he is writing and she has been taking care of the hotel, pages and pages of typed structures of the same sentence "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," the elevator blood scene that is first seen by Danny before they even go to the Overlook Hotel, the "redrum" door that is drawn by Danny after he has physically withdrawn from his worldly body and leaves Tony, his imaginary friend, there in his vocal chords to assure his mother that he is safe and then the twins, delightful and zombie-esque in their pleas to have Danny come play with them forever.
I had to think about the composition in a different way, it couldn't just be one film still of a character, it had to be a painting, first and foremost, not a direct copy of what the lense saw, it had to have the essence of Kubrick's vision, but still be mine. As I continue in my career I begin to think of my paintings as scenes from films, though they are not, and though this is the first painting I have ever done based on a film. They start in the middle, just as
The Shining does. We learn very quickly that there is a history of abuse in this family. It is physical, violent, possibly sexual, definitely maniacal and there is also quite a bit of neglect being presented to us in the care of one character to another.
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| "just like pictures in a book" 18x18" Acrylic on Canvas. April 2013. |
So too, the painting starts in the middle. If you were to read this painting from left to right, and you can, you'll noticed that I left out the word "All" in the entire part which contains text. You'll also notice that the first "and" is missing the letter 'n.' When I researched my source imagery I found this particularly appealing, because for me it relates to the fact that none of the characters in this film are complete, there is something missing in each one of them, some sense of facing reality. Each of them in turn breaks, becoming affected by the ghostly inhabitants of the hotel. The letters themselves become larger as they meld into the wall support of the elevator, just as the problems they face with violence from their dangerous inner voices become larger. The elevator and the blood, well who could resist the challenge of painting blood.. I have a particular fondness for fluid motion. Many of my works carry this same theme, usually in the form of water. You may notice that the elevator itself, though it is detailed with the running Native American motif at the top is blanked out where the push buttons should be. In the film, those doors never open, they just spew blood, and in the film, we escape along with Danny and Wendy, but not through those doors, we must go outside of the hotel and the painting to do that. Going with my theme of middles, you see neither the top or the bottom of the "redrum" door, you are given a handle and even a key hole, which symbolically refers to the peep show/fantasy that Jack enjoys when he first enters Room 237. Finally there are the twins.
Andy Nolan, when I asked him to give me a C&C on the finished piece, asked me why I cut the right girl off. This was a very serious compositional decision on my part. Being that they are the only human element and they are in the foreground of the work, I knew they would get a lot of attention, and I didn't want to give them more real estate in the painting than was necessary. I'm counting on the way our minds and eyes work together, by filling in the space for me. They lead you out of the painting, allow you to escape outside.
As to the way in which one element overlaps another, well this coincides with the style of the film as well. Kubrick faded many of scenes directly one into another, overlapping the moving images. I've gone back and watched the film several times now since completing the painting, it is worth another viewing even now, as every time I go back, I notice something else that I didn't see before. My hope is that I have given an essence of what Kubrick intended in the film along with my personal take on what affected me most with his work. I struggled with the title of this work, at first leaning towards the quote that the girls say to Danny, and then thinking about naming it Room 237, but then after watching the film again, I had an epiphany. The advice that Halleran gives Danny about the visions he is seeing is really pretty key to this film, "Remember, they are just like pictures in a book, they are not real."
Special thanks to those mentioned in this post, you kept me thinking about what I was doing, and that is always a good thing, and a thank you to all of the chatters on ZBHO, for your constant input, support, feedback and encouragement.
*ZBHO can be found at Zbrushhangouts.com. It's an online community of artists working via video platform in real time.
