Alanna Blake

Taking found images, early renaissance paintings and personal memories as source material, this series of works attempts to disrupt the grand narratives of historic paintings by borrowing their compositions, figures and techniques but orienting them within the worlds of today’s young adults and older people. These are often points of painful life transition that are universally experienced. In un-magnificent, ordinary scenes I aim to convey the contrast of the grand narrative to the colloquial.

My main influence for this body of work has been the serene, pensive figures from early renaissance painters such as Piero Della Francesca and Giotto as well as later historical artworks, such as late paintings and etchings by Francisco Goya that thematically explore the folly of man, alongside references to 20th century artists such as Winifred Knights and Justine Kurland and the poem “Musee de Beaux Arts” by W.H. Auden, particularly the first four lines which read:

“About suffering they were never wrong,

The old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position: how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along”