{"id":2067,"date":"2009-01-18T20:48:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-18T20:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/julyandavis.com\/?post_type=jetpack-portfolio&p=2067"},"modified":"2023-01-18T20:55:22","modified_gmt":"2023-01-18T20:55:22","slug":"secret-life-of-an-artists-model","status":"publish","type":"jetpack-portfolio","link":"http:\/\/julyandavis.com\/index.php\/portfolio\/secret-life-of-an-artists-model\/","title":{"rendered":"Secret Life of an Artist’s Model"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To be a figure model is to be exposed, but to model for an artist is to bend a mirror.\u2019<\/em> Amy De Lira, artist\u2019s model<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For nearly a decade, I have worked with one model, Amy De Lira. She has portrayed numerous characters for me; women drawn from American folklore, from frontier history, and even from the surreal dreams the pandemic inspired. And she has done more than that. To play the role of Teresa Giannini, wife of the Napoleonic exile General Raoul, she used her skills as a seamstress and dress designer to make her own Empire dress for the role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wanted to hear Amy\u2019s thoughts on these many collaborations. Some of her responses were poetic, and others amusingly brief- reminding me of the old TV interviews with the famously taciturn actor Robert Mitchum. Taken together however, Amy\u2019s \u2018yeps\u2019, \u2018nopes\u2019 and poetic musings mimicked her strengths as a model- her ability to vanish into a part, while keeping the door cracked at best to the very private, interior world of her subject. Mystery is her business, and she achieves it with business-like economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018I posed for sculpture, paintings and sketches. My accident turned into art. I learned to reflect other artists\u2019 visions. To tell the story through form.\u2019 A.D.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is unusual for a narrative painter to use a single model to illustrate multiple characters, but Amy had the qualities I sought for the stories that drew me. We first collaborated on a series based on Appalachian murder ballads- part of a tradition that had crossed the Atlantic centuries ago from the Scottish Borders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Left panel \u2018To grow in the sick tree\u2019s path\u2019 Oil on canvas 62\u00d7184\u2033 2014<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I read history to find subject matter, and what I look for, the inspiration I seek, often leaps off the page in a single phrase or a couple of lines. A few words from the past that speak to the present, that fit the prevailing mood of my narrative work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Nescient Fatalism\u2019<\/em><\/strong>– that one phrase from \u2018Albion\u2019s Seed\u2019 (David Hackett Fisher) summed up the hard hereditary fatalism of the American backcountry- an acceptance of violence and of a woman\u2019s place in a culture of honor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Amy can stand against a barn hung with racoon skins and convey a resignation so lengthy that the grasses have entangled her. Or, picking up a makeshift sling blade in a broken field, shift the weight in her hips to make her pose as defiant as her gaze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2018His wife was the former Marchioness de Sinabaldi (\u2026) There they lived in great poverty, and to eke out their meager fare, she would make ginger cakes and perhaps other confections to sell to the passing traveler. It would seem that the lady was very much of a songstress, for passers-by would often remark upon the beautiful arias coming from her cabin or from the surrounding forest.<\/em><\/strong>\u2019 (Days of Exile; The Story of the Vine and Olive Colony in Alabama by Winston Smith 1967)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a stand of native bamboo, clouded with mosquitoes, Amy sits among her gilded furniture, or wields a Napoleonic sword to fashion some shelter. Rousseau\u2019s fantasy confronted by the green nightmare of America\u2019s early frontier. Amy was ready to slog through the undergrowth in a gown that hid a pair of army boots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
\u2018Son premier soin\u2019 Oil on canvas 72\u00d738\u2033 2016<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2018My family history has a lot to do with hardship and emigration.\u2019 A.D.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Teresa, the Marchioness, was Italian and Amy can have an Italian look, her own geneology being Mexican and Polish. From these family histories she drew an affinity with Teresa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018A narrative happens every time a pose is taken. That\u2019s the job.\u2019 A.D.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I start a new project, Amy and I discuss the character. My painting, through composition, color, tone, subject, is an attempt to depict and convey a single mood. In a similar way, Amy distills her character\u2019s poses to a single emotion. Her hair, seemingly imbued with a life of its own- twisting, writhing, coiling around her sad face, is always a supporting actor. I try to paint the landscape as an extension of my subject\u2019s psychology, imbuing each inch of canvas with their mental state, and Amy\u2019s hair twines with the action of the leaves and vines. I\u2019m reminded of the mysterious lines from \u2018Wildwood Flower\u2019: \u2018I will twine and will mingle my raven black hair, with the roses so red and the lilies so fair.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Mere-maid got a forked tail just like a shark. (\u2026) They walk- slide long on tail. Pretty. From their waist down to tail blue scale.\u2019<\/em><\/strong> South Carolina Narratives by G. W. Chandler (Federal Writer\u2019s Project, 1941)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

South Carolina legend speaks of how captured mermaids beckoned storms and floods to set them free. Like any actress, Amy drew on her own experiences. \u2018Struggle and hardship are momentary but intense and very real. No matter who I am, I am her in that moment.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The Hunt (Mermaid Storm Series 2016)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2018South Carolina had been rampant for years. She was the torment of herself and everybody else. (\u2026) South Carolinians had exasperated and heated themselves into a fever that only blood-letting could ever cure. It was the inevitable remedy.\u2019<\/em><\/strong> \u2018A Diary from Dixie\u2019 by Mary Boykin Chesnut 1861\u201365.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

With costumes and props, Amy and I have recreated specific moments and people in the history of the South, but I started to notice how audiences responded to the paintings. Often, they preferred not to know the origins of the work. Instead, they enjoyed the mystery of the image, and to guess for themselves the story behind Amy\u2019s enigmatic portraits. Art\u2019s greatest power is to involve an audience, eliciting as many responses as there are viewers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mystery has suffered in recent art. Symbolism evolved into surrealism, but, barring the work of a few eccentric outliers, mystery in painting stopped with Abstract Expressionism. Today\u2019s art is often dependent upon text and lengthy explanation, and very often incomprehensible without it. Art about art can be chilly. We live in a time that seems to ache for storytelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pandemic inspired strange dreams in people. My work shifted from the specific to the surreal. Amy drifts from her past roles into a dreamy present, traveling with an endangered bear or guarding dusty rooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With costumes and props, Amy and I have recreated specific moments and people in the history of the South, but I started to notice how audiences responded to the paintings. Often, they preferred not to know the origins of the work. Instead, they enjoyed the mystery of the image, and to guess for themselves the story behind Amy\u2019s enigmatic portraits. Art\u2019s greatest power is to involve an audience, eliciting as many responses as there are viewers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mystery has suffered in recent art. Symbolism evolved into surrealism, but, barring the work of a few eccentric outliers, mystery in painting stopped with Abstract Expressionism. Today\u2019s art is often dependent upon text and lengthy explanation, and very often incomprehensible without it. Art about art can be chilly. We live in a time that seems to ache for storytelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pandemic inspired strange dreams in people. My work shifted from the specific to the surreal. Amy drifts from her past roles into a dreamy present, traveling with an endangered bear or guarding dusty rooms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The Next Stop Oil on canvas 34×40″ 2020<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
The Next Obstacle oil on canvas 30×28″ 2020<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u2018We could make something that would outlast us.\u2019 A.D.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I asked Amy if she could pick a single work from our collaboration to represent her for posterity, or that represented her in her complexity. I liked her reply. \u2018Nope. There was never one painting that encapsulated me.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She is quite right, of course. Nor have I captured Teresa, or any of the other characters, real or fictional. What have I painted then? I\u2019ve been told my work is, particularly for today\u2019s art world, unusually non-subjective- that I am not \u2018in\u2019 my paintings. But what I paint does belong to me. It\u2019s that jolt of recognition I find in old books. My<\/em><\/strong> jolt of recognition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagination and disbelief- these are two things the artist smuggles intact from childhood. Amy provides the face of the wonder and outrage I still feel at aspects of our world. As an artist, I am an outsider trying to convey the news of my mystification. So indeed, as Amy says, she does \u2018bend the mirror.\u2019 <\/em>She is the manifestation, the altered depiction of that news. The artist can only capture their response to the world, not the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amy\u2019s reply also makes me think about privacy. In a time when privacy seems cheap- eagerly given away to social media and technology- it\u2019s wonderful to be reminded by an artist\u2019s model, perhaps the definition of an exposed subject of scrutiny, that we are all of us concealed and unassailable in our complexity. We should treasure that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To be a figure model is to be exposed, but to model for an artist is to bend a mirror.\u2019 Amy De Lira, artist\u2019s model For nearly a decade, I have worked with one model, Amy De Lira. She has portrayed numerous characters for me; women drawn from American folklore, from frontier history, and even from the surreal dreams the pandemic inspired. And she has done more than that. To play the role of Teresa Giannini, wife of the Napoleonic exileRead more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"jetpack-portfolio-type":[],"jetpack-portfolio-tag":[],"class_list":["post-2067","jetpack-portfolio","type-jetpack-portfolio","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/julyandavis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/jetpack-portfolio\/2067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/julyandavis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/jetpack-portfolio"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/julyandavis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/jetpack-portfolio"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/julyandavis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/julyandavis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2067"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/julyandavis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/jetpack-portfolio\/2067\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2071,"href":"http:\/\/julyandavis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/jetpack-portfolio\/2067\/revisions\/2071"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/julyandavis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/julyandavis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"jetpack-portfolio-type","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/julyandavis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/jetpack-portfolio-type?post=2067"},{"taxonomy":"jetpack-portfolio-tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/julyandavis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/jetpack-portfolio-tag?post=2067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}