This will be the last post comparing Alvaro’s and my paintings of the human figure. My Woman Rising and Alvaro’s Sea Goddess are below.
McCauley Woman Rising 41 x 3
One can immediately see that the approach to both subject and palette is totally different. Woman Rising is a more intimate portrait (albeit of no one in particular); Sea Goddess is contained, formal, the figure representing something larger than the individual.
My interest in the human figure is that I am moved by the gestures we make as human beings, gestures that unconsciously reveal us; in the case of this woman a shyness, a coquettishness.
- I like to capture the psychology of the figure, the persona we would wish we were revealing, in this case humility and good manners, but which catch us as we really are and which anyone can see.
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Cardona-Hine Sea Goddess 41 x 31
- Sea Goddess expresses a more fundamental or archetypal view of the human figure. It harks back to a whole history of representing the figure as larger than our individual lives.
The effect is formal, even distancing, the palette deeply subtle compared to the bright, contrasting colors used in Woman Rising.
Cardona-Hine is aiming at something in us that he would say is our essential nature; we ARE gods and goddesses. We ARE larger than what we present ourselves as being.
Alvaro and I are two artists living together for over 40 years, in the same space, with our individual views, our specific focuses. The only way to be!
