Royal Families, The Middleton Thing and etc.

A Brave Choice

from the series, "Royal Families" to be shown at the Cameron House, June 2011.

10x12 inches, acrylic on canvas, framed

$160.00

General thoughts on the series so far, without edits, in no particular order of importance.

The above image is a bit of a joke, on a few levels, my first thought was, "this is too much." or "MI5 will be crashing through my window the minute I post this". Believe me, I mean no harm, I was just looking at a dry cleaning bag that was hanging in my closet and then was thinking back over the weekend and just how much my best girl talked about how much she liked K. Middleton's dress, the thing just kind of fell together. The last piece being I had considered including guns in some of the Royal Families pictures, I have never painted guns, the only guns I painted wer for a couple of cowboys riding on chickens. I subscribe to the same belief that in theatre the minute a gun comes out, the story is pretty much over, I'm smarter than that. I can imply a gun or violence, I don't need one mucking up my paintings.

What else, I suppose the first image from Royal Families "Pitchfork" reminds me of Jackie Onassis, something about the baggy sweater and bandana, if she ever wore these things I'm not sure. The Life Jackets definitely get me thinking about the Kennedy burial at sea of JFK Jr. and Carolyn Bissette. Expect a couple more of those to show up. I'm surprised how long it has taken me to settle on what I'm doing for the Cameron House show, there were some false starts and lots of small works leading up to this run of productivity, but everything feels to be in the right place, but I said in earlier posts, I haven't had a cigarette in a few days so I am trying to keep my hands as busy as possible so if there is a bombardment of crazy stuff showing up here, that is also a factor.

This series seems to have more "fashion" in it than past work, I'm spending alot more time considering the clothes that the folks are going to wear in the images, there may be some patterns showing up, who knows.

I am also working hard to avoid thinking about my show at Cowbell, the paintings look great in the space, but if I leave that room with everything that I brought down, I'm really not sure how I'm going to feel, not about the experience, but about having to drag more work back to my studio. Work that is of a quality that I know is very, very good, is admired and is well priced. It's getting to be a bit much. Luckily, while all this is happening I am writing notes for the (now) sprawling world that is "Any How Town" and (maybe as always) if some patron smiles down on me with the showing at Cowbell I can take a little time (just a little) to write the first book of the series.

thanks for listening, best

A.Shay Hahn

madcraftshoppe@live.com