[amarilliart.com] updates

First, I am already tired of the colors of this new layout, so I'll change them as soon as I manage ^_^

Secondly, the story with the canvas ended well, but we had to re-stretch it for the third time.
(I had already stretched it twice before, the first time it was too loose, the second I wetted it before stretching it, which I thought would be a smart idea, but which WAS NOT).

It was a pain and a sweat, I even cried but at the end we made it and it turned out totally acceptable (means very good but alas not perfect!).

The opening was a complete success for my friend, and everybody was happy with the painting too, which is nice. But a special mention is for the exceptionnal buffet.... 


(starring : Massimo as our most precious Buffet Chef)



The Tosco-Steampunk Landscape....two meters and 40 long (I don't have the convertor at hand right now to tell how long it is in inches, but hum let's say a basketball player could sleep in a bed that long), 60 cm tall......some details follow :





 

Oh dear, oh dear, if someone has advice on how to re-tension a canvas, please let me know !

It is about the commissionned landscape that has to be ready for tomorrow !!!

Since the canvas seemed a little uneven in some places (with very visible ripples), I applied water on the back before stretching it around the frame, having seen by previous experience that in doing this, the canvas will straighten up and even re-tension a bit (I thought it was because it shrinks in some way, in fact we once had to glue a painted canvas on wood, and it shrinked significantly).
But perhaps I applied too much water, I don't know. The result was that the canvas, which looked absolutely fine at the end of the stretching, became very loose after it dried :( Catastrophy !!!

A painter friend told me to try to spray water on it (behind...it's an oil painting) and dry little by little with a hair-drier. I tried today but with apparently little to no results....I am desperate !

I don't think that taking it off the frame and re-stretching it will be wise....I'm afraid it could rip.

Tomorrow there is the "opening" of the office I have made the painting for, and I'd like it to be there and look nice !!!

I'm not so very keen on updating lately because I am beginning thousand things and not (yet) finishing them.

Anyway, apart from me trying to renovate my blog layout with lamentable results (as you can see), when it's about more traditionnal media, for next week I should finish a commissioned painting for a friend opening his office near Siena.
I will only anticipate that it is a "tosco-steampunk" landscape ;)

Then I have made the portrait of the 3d of the 3 children (Greta, Lucia and now Lavinia) but in spite of my dashing new camera I forgot to take a photograph of it.
Their auntie (the person commissionning them) discovered that I have the other 2 on the internet and she really wants me to put this one up too, so she and my mum are studying a way to let me have a photo of it (hopefully decent).

Last but not least, amidst the 1000 paintings begun but not finished for lack of conviction, I have now made one which I think will be finished in an acceptable time-frame. It represents a subject that I have always loved, the "subject" I painted most (or only) in my childhood, and which I have completely ignored lately (I had my deep psychological reasons ^_^).
Oh well, I will leave it as a surprise.

Another one near completion is a funny 'portrait' of two girls playing in a lavabo... ;)

Then I have 2 commissionned fantasy portraits....please if you have some advice on how to become quick, motivated, non-procrastinating, non-contemplative, and super-productive, let me know. I work so sloooooow.............

Discorso del sig. Akio Nakano, viceresponsabile della divisione educatori della prefettura di Chiba

Il premio nobel giapponese prof. Tonegawa parlando del cuore umano si è chiesto: “In quale parte del nostro corpo lavora il cuore?” Detto così, viene spontaneo mettere la mano sul petto. E invece dovremmo metterla sul nostro cervello. Fino ad ora il cuore umano è stato trattato nel campo della filosofia. Dunque, più la scienza è progredita, più è emerso che il nostro cuore funziona nel nostro cervello. Il prof. ha spiegato questo concetto attraverso l’esempio di un neonato. Supponiamo che la sua famiglia sia composta di un giapponese, un americano, un cinese, un francese, un tedesco ed un coreano. Ogni giorno sente parlare in sei lingue differenti. Quale lingua parlerà da grande? La risposta è: Parlerà tutte e sei le lingue. Ci sono già stati degli esperimenti di questo genere. Ciò significa che un neonato umano possiede un cervello straordinario. Come può essere possibile? Il sig. Tonegawa dice, che ciò dipende dal fatto che l’attività cerebrale di un neonato è diversa da quella di un adulto. Qual è la differenza? Sembra che le onde cerebrali siano diverse

Come sapete, il nostro corpo è composto da cellule, e più precisamente da circa 70 bilioni di cellule. Tutte le parti del corpo – dai capelli fino alle unghie dei piedi – sono composte da queste cellule, che a loro volta sono costituite da molecole. Le molecole sono composte da atomi e gli atomi sono costituite da particelle elementari. Queste sono composte da quanti. La scienza moderna è arrivata fino a questo punto.

Come sono questi quanti? Oscillano come delle onde. OSCILLANO. Il nostro corpo è dunque composto da oscillazioni

In teoria la tesi delle oscillazioni era già stata dimostrata, ma non si sapeva come misurarle. Lo scienziato americano Wanestock ha creato uno speciale apparecchio, che ora si usa anche nel campo della medicina. Attraverso questo strumento si è potuto dimostrare che siamo costituiti di oscillazioni. Tutte le cose – sia animali che piante - emettono onde, emettono la loro frequenza. Di tutte le frequenze emesse dagli esseri umani, quelle del cervello sono le più intense/forti

Anche l’Universo oscilla. Le onde provenienti dall’universo ( Read more... )

A friend of mine put recently up some of my work on Second Life.
After a while she said I'd do better to be able to access myself (at the time there was an italian in-world magazine asking for an interview with me) so I finally created a character whose name is Amarillys Aeon (the first name is a free choice, the second has to be picked from a specific list). Note that if you are a SL user and want to meet there ;)
So now am able to access "Virtualia" as my friend calls it.
Sadly, it "eats away" so much time. It is interesting, but if one is not self-disciplined, it can make one loose the sense of time !
So I have to do like with computer games (or almost--those are now eliminated).

Some areas (sims) are ugly and full of advertisings, but some are absolutely charming, like this one where I took the snapshot of "myself" : it's a Victorian area called Antiquity (where I also have a little antique-style atelier & gallery hehe). When I explored around, I had the sensation to be actually taken to some point back in time, since the settings are so realistic (the building, the sound effects....).



Well, this snapshot shows maybe a more "steampunk" setting....anyway.

I fear my computer is not so very happy when using this application, but once in a while I might wander there, and who knows if to have an exhibition going on virtually will be the same as having a real one....we'll see :)



I still have to do some editing to my appearance, but don't I look quite alike myself already? ;)

PS an update on the prints I will send out to my friends : I have now the most beautiful printer but still haven't learned how to use it. Hold on with a little more patience ! 

“Artists need to be outsiders in order to really view what’s going on. That little bit of detachment has been great for me… As artists, we have to be brave. If we aren’t brave, we aren’t artists.” Writer, Producer, Director Paul Haggis

This is my last painting.....it's actually a DYPTICH.

The original title is :
"AURORA DEL NUOVO GIORNO COSMICO"

The technique is Mixed Media on Canvas, 140 + 50 cm x 100 cm, date July-August 2007.

Credits !!!
- http://hanratty-stock.deviantart.com is the sweet and wonderful model of the photo I used as a reference.
- Aliens are to be credited for crop circle symbols.

Additional notes : this painting is made for the following contest in San Gimignano (Italy):
http://www.premioceleste.it

Here are some close-ups :
- FACE & HAND : http://www.nuitdivine.com/images/detail1_aurora.jpg
- COW'S FACE + HAIR : http://www.nuitdivine.com/images/detail2_aurora.jpg
- HAND & LOTUS : http://www.nuitdivine.com/images/detail3_aurora.jpg
- DRESS + CROP CIRCLE : http://www.nuitdivine.com/images/detail4_aurora.jpg
- SKIRT OF THE DRESS : http://www.nuitdivine.com/images/detail5_aurora.jpg
- OCTOPUS : http://www.nuitdivine.com/images/detail6_aurora.jpg
- FEET : http://www.nuitdivine.com/images/detail7_aurora.jpg

I wish to share some of the symbology of this painting, but first I'd like to specify that it was not in my intention to communicate anything special when I begun it, and asked my muses to assist me in the process of making this work.
So I just followed some "inner" directions I received very clearly and step-by-step (not all at once) and AFTER this I've tried to do some research and to interpret the meaning of the painting.
In the meanwhile, many synchronicities happened, but I will share them in my next post. I think I have an idea now of what this image means ^__^

( Read more... )
1- the first thing that appeared on the painting was the white, milk-giving, horned cow : she's a very ancient symbol, and apparently one of the most common representations of the Great Mother. This symbol can be found in India with Kali's sacred cows, and in Egypt she was Hathor, who produced the Milky Way. In some myth,her milk was said to turn into lotus flowers when it hit the ground.

Besides, it seems that the name of Italy meant "calf-land" and as Barbara Walker states, "This country too was the gift of the Milk-Giver, whom Etruscans called Lat, arabs called Al-Lat, Greeks called Latona, Lada, Leto or Leda. She ruled Latium [the name of Rome's province, now called Lazio] and gave her milk to the world.
All Europe was named after the Goddess as a white Moon-cow, whom the Greeks mated to the white bull incarnation of Zeus. Her alternative name was IO, "Moon". Under this name she was presented in classic mythology as a rival of Hera, but patriarchal writers were always setting different manifestations of the same Goddess at odds with one another, possibly on the principle of divide and conquer.
Hera herself was named IO, ancestress of Ionians. In her temple on the site of Byzantium she appeared as the same lunar cow, the Horned One, wearing the same crescent headdress as the Egyptian Cow-Goddess."

It seems a constant of all myths that the cow was there with the first creatures, giving them sustentment through her milk.

2- the painting is divided in 2 canvases. They are quite disproportionned. In one there are only the woman's feet, and the cow's back & feet, plus some other symbols which appeared at a later stage, so it's difficult to consider those two pieces as independent from each other. In fact, because of the composition, the two paintings HAVE TO stay together (they're as if they were one) otherwise it would be very wrong visually (especially for the large one).
After some research I have come up to the idea that the two canvases might refer to the current Iron Age and the upcoming Golden Age, since from traditional myths, the Iron Age is much shorter (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_age and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_Yuga --> it's interesting to see the link to a bull --may that have been a cow?-- in the article).

I think the two canvases might then refer, as many traditional profecies do, to our era (shorter, and confused) and the upcoming of the next golden age.

3- the girl : I think she represents the whole of humanity, the fact that the character is a girl is probably, apart from an aesthetic choice, to balance the fact that while speaking of the "human race" one might just say "man".
Maybe also because women being capable of birthing bear better the symbol of "whole humanity" ;) I think of the connection with the life-giving cow=Great Mother.
It seems to me that the Golden Age is matriarchal in essence, or, in any case, that a new matriarchy is what could balance the damages the human race has inflicted upon the planet and its own children in an era of strict patriarchy and materialism.

4- the octopus clinging to the earth : I wouldn't have liked to represent a disturbance in a ...hum....disturbed way. I don't like this kind of depiction in my works.
I am so grateful that this image came to me...it incarnates perfectly the idea of a monster spirit possessing everything with greed, with his tentacles which can represent its many distortions, deformities and neuroses, and its tentative to escape its own ugliness through alternative uglinesses.
A quote from "The Feminine Universe" by Miss Alice Lucy Trent is eloquent on this subject :

"The things sane societies loved, it hated. The things sane societies hated, it loved; the things sane societies tried to do, it tried to avoid; the things sane societies tried to avoid, it did with relish. It pursued chaos and hated order, it worshipped ugliness and loathed beauty. If sane people wished to dress as neatly and well as they could, these people were persuaded to dress as hideously and grotesquely as possible; if sane people wanted music to be melodious, these people (whether we are speaking of their "popular" or their "serious" music) were cozened into believing they liked raucous and tuneless noise. If women had been feminine, if home life had been secure, if children had been innocent, if men had been gallant, if art had been beautiful, if love had been romantic, then all these things must be stood on their heads. Of course, life was not always like that. Of course things had often fallen short of their ideals, or even of their minimal norms; but at least most people tried to do things properly and at least the surrounding civilisation encouraged them to try. Never before had the deliberate aim been an inverted parody of all that should be. Everywhere, in every area of life, a single principle reigned: inversion; the worship of chaos; the creed of the madhouse. "

This symbol also reminds us how much what we feel is our our "rebellion" or uniqueness, is wanted and carefully encouraged by the system, and is part of our submission to it.

This said, I apologize towards octopusses, which are delightful creatures in my opinion, for borrowing their image to transmit such a negative meaning. I know they have very positive aspects too ^__^

5- the crop circles : I haven't understood yet why they wanted to appear in this painting, and how they relate to the rest, but I have noticed something amazing (which gave me goosebumps) after I decided which circle to put in, and where : one of them looks like the geometrical representation of the milk turning into a lotus, another one looks like a tentacle, and then the other two look like objects of our galaxy (a sun-system, and a star) maybe intending to bring the meaning to a more cosmic level.

Thus the title....which was NOT inspired by the muses, but for which I had to study a lot until I felt it was "the right one" (I had a looong list of possible titles but this seemed at last to describe best what I perceived was the idea behind the image).

If there are other meanings or connections in this painting, please let me know ! I am sure there is something to learn from them and I don't want to be oblivious of them ^__^

I'll tell the story of the synchronicities another day ^__^ 

"People take existence too seriously and don't take playful existence seriously enough."

Seth

I know myself quite well (see entry from the 5th July).

I have just entered my piece for the Ripped Off show, and it's not midnight but 1:17 AM of the 1. august here in Italy- so I'm 1 hour and 17 mn too late.....but fortunately EBSQ is American :) so I had some few hours to go !

Here is my work, if you want to see it, it features my auntie's dog, Mafi :

And, as I told previously, it's "ripped off" (or rather, inspired by the style) from EBSQ artist Nicole Helbig.
In the show you can see her work where she "ripped off" one of my works.

I think it's also possible to vote for your fav piece in the show (not sure though if only artists and EBSQ patrons can).

By the way...I didn't make it to paint a Rustagghja for today...but yesterday I finished another large painting which I will photograph & post soon. With a curious story on how it came out like this :) (I can anticipate that it features a girl, a cow, the planet earth and an octopus + some lotus flowers).

For the Rustagghja, I will paint it anyway and maybe send it for the "Better late than never" show (I swear it exists....and it's always very popular!).

Hugs,
Ama

Tratto da: http://nuke.festivaldelnuovotempo.org

Altri links interessanti :
www.13lune.it
http://tzolkin.bluarea.com

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it Illegal!” Graffiti.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/features-message-in-a-bottle.html

I'm featured here at Liberaeva.com.


(Permanent link : http://www.liberaeva.com/1painting/amarilli/amarilli.htm )

...at EBSQart.com, is a yearly show where EBSQ artists are paired up with a partner, and both rip off (with permission) one of the other's artworks (either be subject, medium, style....).

The deadline is the 31.July and, if I know myself well, I'll enter my piece at midnight of the 31 (yet I hope not!!!).

If in the meantime you'd like to see the wonderful work my partner Nicole made, "ripping off" Mystic, and Aristocratic, please see here.

I'll give some news when mine is ready ;)

Today Artella Magazine publishes an interview with me on the electronic version of their magazine.

http://www.artelladailymuse.com/

Sadly, the access to the full interview is only for subscribers, but I have the permission to reproduce the whole page and host it at nuitdivine.com so everybody can read it.

Here you find the interview files as published by Artella, only hosted by myself and available for non-suscribers :

http://www.nuitdivine.com/TheArtellaDailyMuse.htm

Have a nice day!
Amarilli

I've been thinking a lot about what is going on in my mind (artistically speaking) and finally I figured out that I will concretize the subjects which passion me currently into a new series of paintings.

Of course I know the Dark Angels series is not yet finished and still I have a couple of things I want to experiment with. But I find it natural that the transition is not abrupt, and that one series fades into another (sort-of).

I've been exploring the subject of duality between apparence and substance, guardian and protégé, transformation (poison into medicine, light into darkness and into light again). Now I feel drawn towards the realm of pure innocence.

My personal concept of innocence is probably somewhat different from the "usual" one, (I think the christian / victorian view on this subject might have had a significant impact on the modern western mentality), because it's not based on a human moral system, but on the observation of nature.
To better explain with an example, a lion killing an antelope in order to eat her, is for me as innocent as the antelope herself.
A grown-up lion wanting to stop to reproduce for some moral reasons (to give an opposite example) is NOT innocent, but somewhat perverted, in my view (now that was a bad example because I don't think lions do that ^__^).

Nowaday it's usual to see messages about a disturbed, disrupted innocence (which in some ways mirrors a reality).

It is as if innocence has become gradually unacceptable to modern humans (especially along the last century), either because it is too direct, pure and strong in its particular way, or because it has to be removed quickest possible from the human heart in order to "survive" in the jungle of the current values (maybe that's why most people forget their childhood? may that be some form of denial?).

Or maybe it's just this era's tendency to seek distortion and vilify beauty.

I am forming an idea that pure innocence scares. Why, I don't know. One thing is sure, innocence is absolutely "out" as a subject, and is not accpeted to stay as it is, but gives in many a urge to alter it to its contrary.

Just look at all the art depicting children (which in many ways are one of the incarnations of innocence) and notice the intentional contrasting associations between their innocence (childhood itself, cute clothing, nice details, objects and archetypical childhood symbols like pets, puppets, etc...) and other cynism-characterized factors which are in direct opposition to innocence (mature, hateful/suffering eyes; killed or "abused" puppets; make-up or blood running into tears on their cheeks, knives and weapons, or extremely mischievous/sexual looks which seem cut right out of a x-rated magazine).
And look at the success those depictions have ! This is not surprising, even though those anti-symbols have become now very common place.

It is as if innocence itself, with its purity, calls on the interest of innocence-killers, as if it provoked a sort of challenge :" I'm attracted by innocence, but then I take pleasure in being the one who destroys it" many seem to be saying, with their actions.

I think that because I love it and respect it in its sacredness, as a contast to the modern pleasure of perverting the simple nature of things, reflected in many contemporary art trends, I will, in my next series of works, explore such an outdated subject as PURE innocence. I will call the series "INNOCENT INNOCENCE" (and some will pardon me if it's not in the sense they intend ^_^).

The first piece being the soon-to-publish-on-website "Delfina" (more explanations about this piece here).

I hope some will appreciate and enjoy ^__^

Finished yesterday!

I just took this quiz in a pause from the painting I'm working on.

Your Life Path Number is 3

Your purpose in life is to express your unique self. You are a creative and artistic person with an interesting view on life. Witty and outgoing, you enjoy sharing your crazy ideas with anyone who will listen. A total social butterfly, you're the life of any party. In love, you inspire and enchant your partner. You are often an object of fantasy and desire. While you are very talented, you sometimes lack the ambition to put your talents in play. And while your wit carries you a long way, you occasionally use it to mask your true feelings. Your natural abilities can bring you all the success in the world ... if you let them

When I heard the learn'd astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured to much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander'd off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.
- Walt Whitman

"If you examine our way of life today, it's pretty clear that most people in the "civilized world" know more about the lives of Hollywood celebrities, more about writing long lines of computer code, and more about making mixed drinks, than they do about what life truly offers to them. We know more about doing our taxes, what clothing styles are "in" and "out", and the rules and regulations of organized sports leagues, than we know about offering love and support to our families and friends when they need it. In the end, many people end up knowing the in's and out's of office politics more than their own children.
(...)
For it is true that primal peoples had less of our distractions. The conscious experience of nature was far more immediate to them than it is to us today, for many reasons. Did they have problems, flaws, drawbacks? Sure, because they were humans like us. But most people who are realistic will admit that their way of life took less a toll on the world than our way of life today, and they were certainly less concerned with unimportant things and more concerned with things that matter, such as the well-being of their families and their task as human beings in a community of human beings.

Most importantly, they had a direct, conscious connection with the wisdom of the collective human past which came to them through the vehicle of Myth and Saga, which they whole-heartedly accepted and hearkened to- the same myths that the modern world rejects as "superstition" or belittles as primitive attempts to "explain the world" in the "best way they could", with the clear insinuation that we moderns have some new, better ways of explaining the world that bring us far closer to the "truth" than anyone has ever come.

But the reality is that our own modern myths aren't closer to any truth; in fact, a case can be made that they are further from it, because we have forgotten something essential about myths- myths aren't just about explaining the world; at their core, myths are about us.
(...)
Modern scientific myths give us very intricate and detailed stories about the world, and all its physical and chemical formation, and all its evolutionary courses, and they tell us about the vastness of the cosmos- but the never tell us anything about our humanity, about our humanhood. They fail to explain the fact of our consciousness, of our subjectivity; they fail to demonstrate how very material brain matter can give rise to something immaterial like the continuum of consciousness; and even though not a single science-myth believer has ever seen consciousness emerge from the physical matter of the brain, it is accepted by most- quite without evidence- that it must do so.
(...)
The modern myth-writers do not have the open-minded, flexible mind of inquiry that they claim to have; most are quite sold on the myth of materialism, and they see everything with those eyes. They see any and all religious beliefs as childish denial or superstition, and accept their own spiritual nihilism as a form of mental and intellectual "maturity", giving themselves a feeling of superiority over the other human beings who cannot let go of their "security blankets".

They tell us how ancient the earth is, but say nothing about how ancient we are, or how ancient the spirit is. They tell us how vast the cosmos is, but they say nothing about how vast the spirit and its creativity is. They truly know more about the chemical composition of rocks and oceans than they know about how and why to love other human beings. They know a lot about how to sustain a body in health, but not how to live or why. They know how to escape death for as long as possible, but not how to die.

And so it goes. Can any thinking person really believe that these modern myths are "closer to the Truth" than any humans have ever come before now? Even though these modern myth writers have been able to produce air conditioners for us, and brilliant combinations of chemicals to treat our diseases, and pretty light shows and telephones, have they produced what we really need? I think not, and the reason why is because what we really need is not "produced" through scientific effort; what we need is something we always have, something we are born with and something we die with. It's the very basis for the dignity that each living being is heir to. To discover this gift we carry with us through life and death is a matter of wisdom, a matter of re-cognizing who and what we are.

If we don't have this recogntion, we are wandering fools, who will be destroyed by their lack of recognition. If we do have it, then we are true human beings who are consciously made whole by the recognition. To look outside of us, or to the chemical composition of the brain or of the earth's crust in some attempt to "explain" us is a doomed enterprise."

Robin Artisson

http://cauldronborn.blogspot.com/2006/12/our-truth-part-one-seidman-discusses.html