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Gasping Painting

Sheila Wallis

United Kingdom

Painting, Oil on Canvas

Size: 60 W x 36 H x 1.5 D in

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115 Views
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About The Artwork

Closed caption text and a wide screen format are conventions borrowed from cinema to remind the viewer that the purpose of this work is to signpost the canon of western art. I started with this hypothesis: by combining my love of cinema and painting, would it be possible to encapsulate an entire feature length film into a single image? In ‘Gasping’ we encounter a character first created by the novelist Tracy Chevalier, Johannes Vermeer’s pale and beautiful housemaid Griet. She has been transcribed into Peter Webber’s film ‘Girl with a Peal Earing’ (2003), in which we frequently observe Griet busying herself with the grind of daily chores. In ‘Gasping’ we find Griet washing windows in order to improve the light in the studio of her master Vermeer. I am touched by this scene particularly, which follows one in which we find her sorting vegetables into a colour palette. Clearly a visually intelligent child inspired by order and arrangement, she has been forced into a servitude where advantage is often taken of her. I intend the framing of ‘Gasping’ to insinuate the unexpected appearance of the artist, encroaching on the girl’s private world to find her gasping at the intrusion. The painting shows a studio recreation of the 17th century domestic interior of the Vermeer residence in Delft, possibly inspired by Vermeer’s ’Young Woman with a Water Pitcher’. However faithful to the period the cast and film may be, my painting has the hint of artifice at its centre, winking to the audience that however convincing things might at first appear, my business here is with the restorative potential of painting first and foremost. Art, in this case, imitates life imitating art.

Details & Dimensions

Painting:Oil on Canvas

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:60 W x 36 H x 1.5 D in

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Winner of The Threadneedle Prize, and 2019 winner of the London and the South East Regional Prize at ING Discerning Eye Exhibition. Sheila Wallis brings the skills of a traditional figurative painter to bear on a wide spectrum of contemporary and historical subject matter. Cinematic film stills, photojournalism, boxing bouts, post mortem daguerreotypes and Victorian asylum photographs have all inspired a meticulous critique of lens-based imagery, inviting reconsideration of the public and the private, fiction and fact, the dispassionate lens and the hand of the painter. Drawing on her experience of growing up catholic in Derry City in the north of Ireland during the height of the Troubles, Wallis’ work insinuates political awareness and redemptive creative transformation in equal measure. Sheila Wallis has also won the Winsor and Newton Painting Prize, the Watts Painting Prize and In 2014 was awarded the City and Guilds of London MA Fine Art Principal’s Prize. Sheila lives with her husband in London, and works from her South London studio

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