Tiny Crimes
Tiny Crimes (Paintings from film)
I don’t understand life but I know something about movies. We all do! Somehow this rose-colored mirror might inform us about the real thing. I’m interested in cinematic archetypes. Cheap effects, long drawn-out shots. The gimmicks of storytelling. I love the day for night hocus-pocus that makes us laugh and cry and be scared. For me primarily the being scared part. Why do we want so much for that in our entertainment, but none of it in our real life? What is it about entertainment that we find some commonality, why does it work? Especially watching flickering lights in the dark alone with a hundred other people. References we all share or connect with others by sharing the rare and unpopular. That in itself has become a commodity, the so-called independent film.
My latest body of paintings is derived from a film in process.
Tiny Crimes is a movie employing these cinematic archetypes, shot in off the cuff style referencing films I love, plotted as you go. Roles are not defined, neither in front of the camera (the actors), nor behind the camera (the production). With a in-development narrative that is at once familiar, but not to be resolved in any conventional manner. To me, conclusions and meaning are just as much gimmicks as grease on the camera lens. As Luis Bunuel once said: "I don’t want any plot to muck up my film".
Tiny Crimes will follow through a series of horror/crime film setups, actions and sequences and from the stills of these scenes the paintings will tell another story, maybe not the one that the film will eventually allude to.
