Lowering the temperature & igniting the imagination….ART FOR WRITERS
It’s approaching 30 degrees where I am right now (Brighton on the English south coast) so I was in the mood for this picture by Pascal Campion.
It’s called Deep Breath.
Hmmm…deep breath before what? The guy looks expectant but not exactly hopeful. What’s just been said. Or nor said.
Her shoulders are hunched. It’s a cold day, so why not…but maybe she is tense because of what she thinks is about to happen.
You can find lots of other atmospheric paintings by Pascal Campion on his blog and at Diviant Art, an international online community for artists and people who like art
9 comments on “Lowering the temperature & igniting the imagination….ART FOR WRITERS”
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BRIDGET WHELAN writer 
A lovely picture and commentary, Bridget.
Thanks for coming by. Glad you like the picture as much as I do.
The fact they’re both sitting in the more elevated position atop of the backrest of the bench rather than on the bench-seat itself (something only teenagers or perhaps people in their early twenties would typically do) possibly hints at a need to gaze further ashore in a search for answers to some undisclosed (by the artist) problem than the less height-advantaged regular seated position could afford.
Blimey, we’re all amateur psychoanalysts when we want to be!
Wow! That’s good and you’re absolutely right that you have to be a certain age to sit on the backrest of a bench. I like the straw or whatever in the boy’s mouth, it’s too thin to be a cigarette, and I can imagine it sticking to his upper lip. It suggests a studied casualness that he doesn’t feel. There, a bit more amateur psychology…
I’m thinking, not too modestly, the only person who might have the porkchops to go one better and deeper than the two of us in revealing the hidden meanings of this scene might be Freud himself.
Then again he was a pro wasn’t he, so technically that rules him out of the amateur division.
If there’s any other backyard Dr Phil’s out there who’d like to chance their hand on this pic, it might make for some interesting reading… for the rest of us…
Shows how much you can read into a painting…
Reblogged this on Wind Eggs and commented:
Comic or poster-style pop art has been popular since Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Johns brought the images of consumer culture to the galleries. Lichtenstein’s attempts to reproduce halftone comic images pointed back to pointillism enough to eventually earn critical acceptance. The mention of Warhol’s name, however, still stirs up visceral reactions in those who consider him derivative and even fraudulent.
On the other hand, guerrilla art, the art at the vanguard of an emerging movement, is often calculated to piss people off.
Even classical and neoclassical art, however, remains more stylized than a reproduction of the real. Campion’s highly stylized work calls to mind comic book covers. Deep Breath, for instance, conveys the angst of a teen romance comic. The use of position and expression tell the story on the pages within, exactly what a cover should do. The gray skies and beach in shadows reflect his emotional turmoil. He studies her, but her attention is on the ocean. Even together, he lies outside her sphere of awareness, pining for a warmer reception but receiving a metaphorical cold shoulder.
You can see Deep Breath and other paintings at Briget Whelan’s Art for Writers site.
Cold shoulder indeed!
Interesting Philip, that you think the story belongs to the guy. Whose story is it? is one of the questions writers have to ask ourselves and sometimes we are still struggling with the answer well into the second draft. Here it could go either way – the guy has the more passive role I suggest, the girl is the one taking action, the one needing to breathe deeply… but being on the sidelines is often a good place for a narrator (thinking of the Great Gatsby and A Prayer for Owen Meanie)