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This piece began as a simple experiment in composition. I had scanned the "background" image earlier, and then had scanned my action figure later and was playing with some of the filters and things available in Photoshop as a way of thinking about a composition I was toying with. One of the things I would like to do in the next year is to reintegrate painting into my computer generated pieces by literally painting over portions of the piece, so I have been scanning things with voids where I could add elements later. I approached this, then, as a study for a future painting. Painters do these things all the time, where they paint a miniature version of what is to become a much larger painting so that they can play with the composition before they invest so much time into the final product. I decided to do it in my computer rather than by hand, since the elements were already sitting on my hard drive. When I got finished, I was initially skeptical of the results, but I printed off a quick draft and just kind of kept it around for a few days to look at it. Slowly it grew on me so I had to find a title. I knew that the major figure on the left is an action figure I have called "Valkerie" by McFarlane Toys (Spawn Series 22, Dark Ages Spawn: The Viking Age, 2002, www.spawn.com) so, being ignorant as I am about world mythologies, I looked up "Valkyrie" in my trusty symbol dictionaries. But I wasn't entirely satisfied with just that so I went on to look up the other things: the blue of the background, the axe head (also from one of my action figures... I have quite a collection), the butterfly, the stars, etc. Somewhere in that flipping, I caught sight of an entry for "Brunhilde" and I had to stop. I've always liked the sound of the name (call me crazy) so I was curious. It turned out that Brunhilde was exactly who I had depicted in this piece. According to the story synopsis offered in my little dictionary, the Valkyries as a whole were god-like creatures (kind of like nymphs, I think) who were known for their bravery in battle and who were assigned the task of inspiring men to go to war and then guiding their spirits into the afterlife when they were killed. Brunhilde was one of these lovelies, a virgin who was imprisoned behind a wall of fire by the gods and who would only yield to a pre-ordained hero. Wagner made her a central figure in The Ring Cycle as the Valkyrie who defied her father, Wotan, and was cursed to live as a mortal, but who found mortal love and died because of it. In my piece, then, Brunhilde is shown in the soft glow of an unnatural spirit against the blue background of dreams, divinity and infinity. The broken axe seems to represent the loss of her power as a warrior, while the bridesmaid signifies the human role that she takes on. The piece has a dreamlike appearance, or perhaps the feeling of prophecy, as if we see clearly where Brunhilde is going, yet she is still unearthly and enchanted. |
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