“Originally my concept stems from Shakespeare’s unfortunate
figure of Ophelia in his play Hamlet. However,
instead of focusing on the tragedy of Ophelia’s tale I
wanted to explore the struggle and then eventual calm
within her. In the painting she is a living Ophelia refusing
to be consumed by the thoughts of her father’s
death or her lover’s ruinous ways. There is blue light
that swims with the colors of naked splendor at once
released from a life enclosed. In the modernizing, the
stream in which she drowns becomes instead a swimming
pool with bright blue colors that contrasts with
and enhances the figure’s red hair and pale skin tones.
Enlivening for me is this image of cool, blue water and
red hair, the whole world of my thoughts triggered by
the bottom of a swimming pool.
Visually I was drawn to this subject matter because I
wanted to explore the force of a strong primary color
juxtaposed with the human figure. The effect of the
swimming pool blue is very powerful and has a great
influence on the flesh of the figure surrounded and
emerged by it. The emergence of the figure in the water
distorts and charges the flesh until [it] almost doesn’t
look like a figure at all. The figure above the water is
primarily realistic and then the part below is warped
and abstracted. I was therefore able to combine two
different painting styles and make them compliment
each other in one painting. The combination of two
different painting types is a metaphor for the other
combinations taking place on the canvas; the combination
of resistance and calmness, of failure and triumph,
and of life and death.”
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