It’s very uncanny. During the day when I’m ruminating about what I’ll write in my post I invariably read something that connects with the subject of the post. So I came across a blurb about Ernest Hemmingway. It said that when he was in Paris in the 1920’s early on in his writing career, he was looking at the paintings of Cezanne to get more “volume” in his writing. He wasn’t just thinking about the characters and their stories but the feeling of the space in which it was all taking place. So back to painting I’ve been thinking about how many spaces are involved in a painting or drawing. Well the standard explanation goes like this- We have the space in the painting and we have the actual space in which the painting and the viewer are in. Pretty basic stuff. So my question is this. is there another space bigger than the Painting, the viewer and the room they are in? Enter the Fourth Wall. As you know in theatre, there are The actors on stage, and the audience watching them and they remain separated by the invisible Fourth Wall. And the actors are told NEVER break the Fourth Wall! But in a great play there are moments when that Wall dissolves and Audience and the Actors find themselves in a new space they have never been in. There is usually a Fourth Wall between a painting and the viewers of the painting. Can that dissolve too, like the theatrical Fourth Wall? Yes. It has happened with my own work. I will let an ardent follower of my work take center stage now and describe her experience
“A sense of Artistry and movement that draws me into the characters and makes me think of the life within. I feel at one with the people you create like it was me in another lifetime. that is provocative and inspires me”
Here is one of these people in what I call my Living theatre in paint that can break the Fourth Wall…..
Another way the fourth wall can be dissolved is in these Immersive Art events. I think they rob the viewer of their own great imaginations and replace it with flashy “high tech”. I’m not impressed. It’s just a few notches above Disneyworld. Flashy and “new”. The possibilities of the truly big spaces that are a co-creation of the creator and the viewer are not about being “new”. They are timeless. even Immortal.
Ah yes…another one from my Painted Living Theatre, THE SPATIAL DREAMER. maybe you can break the Fourth Wall with her?
Just writing this post has sparked a whole bunch of new ideas which i will save for my next post. Wonderful to see you all in here again. I look forward to any of your thoughts and comments!
To ever bigger spaces in every square inch of our lives!
Ricky
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