A-muse Bouche

I’ve had a long running artistic obsession with the actor Sharon Stone. I’ve often wondered why and have a few answers, although none of them are particularly satisfying. I like the accessibility of a Hollywood muse. Like all my paintings, I’m not really painting the person, but more the actor acting. I enjoy the passage of time as it becomes observable in these paintings; it makes me look at my own growth as a painter, but also makes me admire the actor’s personal aging process.

Something about this subject matter addresses an obsession with stardom. If I was a fanboy, this might be a problem. But I don’t really like Sharon Stone in any particular way, she’s a stranger after all. What I do like is trying to paint this human’s bouche, nose and lips, various hair styles, jaw line, and the sometimes androgynous camera angles that I find. Focusing on a female muse like this is complicated, the history of art and the male gaze and the muse in painting are all fallow ground. But these forms tell me more about myself than the possible personality of another.

These recent Sharon Stone paintings come out of a single scene of a Magnum P.I. episode – one of her first acting roles – where she plays a murderous evil twin that is actually one part of a split personality. Oh, how the split personality gained sitcom glory in the 80’s! This body of work has reinvigorated my attachment to this subject, and the plot gave me permission to paint ‘multiple personalities’, in effect, twinning the twin. Refs Morandi, printing and copying, variations in form.

Orange tinted glasses ‘rose coloured glasses’. . It’s a motif that I am always trying to push through. It has been widely shown and communicates sexuality and strength and calls on pop art, 80s nostalgia, recurring trends in fashion. Poses are chosen to land on and between the iconic, the sex symbolic, with a high degree of drama with orange and teal colour schemes.