Riffing on Patricia Highsmith (Ph.3). Acrylic, pencil and oil paint on prepared paper. 68 X 97cm.
So, the writer’s books, personality and look are challenging and a great springboard for art. Even her drawings are pretty strong. You can like the work and not the person, though her real for love snails over humans make for some fun stories, not so her self loathing and mean anti-semitism.
Trying not to be too literal (yes, that is a pun) and taking a recent life painting, I loaded the work with extra specific imagery, textures and mediums. Trying to get a feeling of her world. The Ph.3 is a pun as well. You can make of it what you will.
So there’s:
• pretending to be another – the model being changed to the idea of ‘Patricia’
• The intense look
• The angry typewriter
• A lovely snail
• A carpet to hide things under
• The sharp scalpel
• Paperbacks strewn
• An exotic plant
• The rented bare apartment
• Jarring colours
• A blood red sheet cascading down
• A wall of what is real and not real (obviously a painting is not real; or as real as a novel…)
• … is that a body behind that far wall?
See below for details.
Photos of Patricia Highsmith and an old sketchbook page and new sketchbook pages with lists.
Trevor Mill Graphic Designer Ltd 