The Omo
I’m absolutely awe inspired by the Omo people of Ethiopia. My friend Bridgette shared this video with me and I’m so moved by the purity and beauty of expression. I hope I can capture some of that in my new work. Happily, can not get the images out of my mind.
The photographs are from six years work by Hans Silvestri. Silvester describes his mission, “what’s most important for me is saving, in some way, as much as possible of this truly living art, which is mobile, changing, subject to infinite variation, and whose constituent elements are simple and form a link between man and nature. It seems to me that our modern painting found the purpose of these elements, this simplicity, and used it as its foundation.”
As a source of inspiration, I have been thinking about how I would like to express the figure in a manner that could hold up to the same level of grandeur as the omo, which may not happen at all but I at least have to try! At this point I can’t even decide if I want to work 2d or 3d.
So, I am going to start with baby steps. I drew some figures that I will print out several pages of and use them as templates or paper dolls to try and flesh out some ideas. I really want to maintain the notion of, the entire body as canvas (including the head). What I don’t want to do is imitate the images, I’m not interested in copying. I want to interpret the purity and the freshness, I want to try and achieve the visual beauty, the emo of it, if that makes any sense. No, I am not sure until I start working what I mean exactly by that but hope to expound upon it later.
These are the figures I will begin to work with. I have posted them high res on flickr if any one wants to grab them and play around, your welcome to!!
