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| detail The Swimmer |
based on a photograph of the Icelandic band
múm
from Index magazine, April 2002.When my daughter was a baby, I stayed home with her and didn't get a lot of painting done. The only work I have from that time are a few paintings from a series titled The Swimmer. This one is my favorite, and is hanging at my mother's house.
I have spent a lot of time looking at this girl's face! There were a lot of unsuccessful versions of the painting as I recall, and I still stare at it now every time I visit my mother.
I don't remember listening to the band's music before now, but a lot of it is ethereal, and atmospheric, and beautiful, just like the images in the magazine. I love the way they described their album, Finally We Are No One:
The record comes from an imaginary place, maybe there's a valley, a swimming pool, some hills, a tunnel. It's not clear what goes on there. It's open for interpretation. We wrote the music in this really isolated lighthouse. We had to take a little rubber boat to get out there.
They were scheduled to play at Hudson Hall at the historic Hudson Opera House, tomorrow. Besides really liking the music, I got so excited about the idea of seeing this girl's face in real life. I was just about to buy tickets when it got postponed, like everything else, but I have promised myself that the next time they play I am definitely going to see them!
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| The Swimmer, 2005, oil on canvas, 44 x 50 inches |
Listen to
múm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu21Q34OSvQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui6ERk-AySw
Index Magazine
2 comments:
It's a bit of a self portrait too, don't you think?
Michael, people who've seen this painting often think that, but no, I don't consider it a self-portrait at all. Maybe it's because she has dark hair like mine, but it does look just like the photo I copied it from.
Of course you could also argue that every painting is a self-portrait in a way, right?
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