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Make graceful and lasting change

Life upon the wicked stage


Cindy Tonkin - July 3, 2022

I don’t know how i was able to create the face in this piece.

I imagine it built up from all of the playing with offcuts I have done in the past year or so (and here).

i had been looking at the big piece on my lounge room wall today, and noticing how i liked the “curls” in the orange backed face, and tried to replicate, and voila, i found a chin and a hair line and a feather and maybe even a boa…

It makes me think of my friend Louise, but it also reminds me of some Toulouse Lautrec paintings – people watching or participating in cabarets.

The colours of the background help – this particular piece is part of my current series to reclaim space in my cupboards by using all of my saved bits.

the base, which is probably about 210 gsm card, is an old calendar Bronwen gave me years ago, which she hand also saved forever from her days as a paper seller. the original image was metallic, and featured space / science fiction like images, which gave a nice blue metallic base. There is a hand and some armour still visible.

There are little bits of paper which correspond to the Russian wolf story, Karina’s Paris piece, maps of paris, the dragon quote, some London maps, the terrace houses from the laser cutter, and of course pattern pieces. I added a layer of Chanel eyeshadow, some orange and blue oil pastel and it made itself.

I had a particularly good evening – struggling to get myself to the studio on Friday, i started some underlayers, and then on Saturday night I had a full 6 hours to just make and lay down glue.

I’ve called it Life upon the wicked stage because of those Lautrec-like pieces it reminds me of.

The paper is about 60 x 90cm

now where to hang it?

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