From Hachiko to Iranian Vampire Western Movie

May 02, 2020

From Hachiko to Iranian Vampire Western Movie

Yesterday a visitor to my blog wrote:

“You show us step by step how you transform a hare skin to a painting, but do not say the source of your inspiration.”

Fair enough.

Well, since nothing comes of nothing, we all take a feeling, scenery, an old memory or an imagination moment to reshape and transform into a new moment. So, here are a couple of little “secrets” about two of my paintings.

In 2017 I painted a woman’s profile with minimal draws of my painting knife. I started this type of painting, called impasto, after I saw an exhibit of Lucien Freud’s works in Madrid. Here is that painting:

And a close up:

The inspiration came from a moment in the first Iranian Western-genre noire movie (2014) titled “A girl walks home alone at night” which got special accolades at the Sundance Film Festival. I think it was Sheila Vand’s attitude that I found extremely attractive in its minimalistic, B&W capture in one frame.

Here is that frame that I found on the Internet (no copy write seems required to use):

The full page can be seen on my blog at https://vaheark.blogspot.com/2017/10/if-she-looks-back-follow-her.html

The second painting I would like to discuss is that of a mountain lion I painted recently. I always look at the particular shapes of the hare skin I use as canvas and try to imagine what would best fit within those shapes. In this case I thought of my dog and his one lazy ear! Indeed, he is a large Akita with one erect and one always floppy ear, just like Hachiko the famous Akita of Japan whose statues are all over Japan.

Here is a photo of Hachiko from the 1920s: