USA Archives – Emma Cownie

Posted on November 20, 2021November 20, 2021 by emma cownie — 16 Comments

Trading Paintings with Jessica Brilli

I was delighted a while back to be asked by one of my very favourite artists of all time, Jessica Brilli, to trade paintings. Jessica has been a big influence on my own style of painting so I feel very appreciated and validated by her contacting me to say she loved my work and wanted to own some and have my work in her home.

I have always have found myself drawn to and influenced by painters who have a special relationship with colour and light and Jessica Brilli’s work is full of sunshine and nostalgia. She combines American realism with graphic design elements, simplifying elements and focusing on everyday scenes and objects. She was Jessica was also awarded as Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant in 2021!

Jessica Brilli's works — A selection of Jessica Brilli’s works

The paintings we traded: – My painting of Gola Island called “With A Road Running Through It” a rural minimal oil painting.

With a Road Running Through It _ Emma Cownie — With a Road Running Through It

With a Road Running Through It – me posing with my painting on a blustery Donegal afternoon.

With a Road Running Through it - with Jessica Brilli — “With a Road Running Through It” in the USA with Jessica Brilli

In return, Jessica sent her painting “Cutlass” of a vintage American car – acrylic on wooden panel. I was very excited to open up the packaging and see one of her paintings in the flesh. I didn’t realise that it was painted on wooden panel rather than canvas. I really liked the weight and solidity of the wooden panel. It was also a real pleasure to see the brush stokes and the layers of paint close up. You cannot get a sense of these things in photos at all. So I have been quietly obsessing about how this painting was made as well as the elegance of its composition. There is a pleasing tension in the slight unbalance of shadows and tiny brush marks that suggest great confidence in the artist’s execution. I really enjoy looking at it.

Jessica Brilli’s “Cutlass” – with me holding it

Cutlass on the wall in our Donegal cottage

Painting of Vintage car — Cutlass- Jessican Brilli

"Cutlass" with one of my husband's self portrait and one of my Gola paintings — “Cutlass” with one of my husband’s self portrait and one of my Gola paintings

I was fascinated by the vintage tape measure Jessica also sent me – it was a weighty object. I was quite struck by its solidity. I think I am too used to plastic tape measures that have beeb made in China. It also only measured inches – not cm. I am only used to tape measures with both inches and cms on them. It amde me realise that despite all the American culture we are exposed to in filsm amd TV shows, we have very few American goods here on this side of the Atlantic. It felt quite exotic and exiting.

I would like to thank Jessica once again for agreeing to trade paintings with me. I am honoured to have her painting in my home. It has given me a real boost. I am now exploring the world of wood panels!

https://www.instagram.com/jessica_brilli_artist/

https://www.facebook.com/jessicabrilliartist/

http://www.theniceniche.com/this-week/jessica-brilli-artist

Posted on January 6, 2019June 5, 2019 by emma cownie — 23 Comments

Art as Satire

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I paint commissions. Most commissions requests are pretty standard, say a beloved dog, a favourite landscape or the owner’s house. Some commissions, however, are different. I recently painted two commissions that quite different from the typical paintings of animals/landscapes. My client sent me two images, both were photographs cut out of the New York Times, with little or no explanation. They were both clearly political in nature. I was given free rein to interpret them as I liked.

Painting of American internment camp on Mexican border — Suffer the Children

I find these commission interesting as these are not my usual subject matter. I *usually* paint landscapes or observational people portraits. However, in painting these images I am forced to look at them carefully and consider the wider implications of what I am observing. I don’t research the image beforehand only afterwards, I just observe.

The first image I painted was of an internment camp. So with “Suffer the Children”, the tents reminded me of the 1970s medical comedy/satire M*A*S*H which was set during the Korean War. In its early years, M*A*S*H was clearly a commentary on the Vietnam War but later on the Cold War in general. It often questioned, mocked, and grappled with America’s role in the Cold War. It was funny and thought provoking.

I knew that the figures lined up in my source photograph were minors. Teenage boys, I guessed from their size. I didn’t know where they were, but I guessed that they were somewhere in the USA near the Mexican border.

It eventually dawned on me that the white squares on their colourful T-shirts were actually I.D. tags, a bit like those luggage labels evacuees wore during Britain in the Second World War. Turns out that these were teenage boys who had entered the USA illegally. This is, in fact, is a secret internment camp at Tornillo, outside El Paso, Texas. I call it secret because no reporters have been allowed to visit although the New York Times wrote an onion piece on its existence. The photos were presumably taken with a drone.

Internment camp at Tornillo, outside El Paso, USA (*New York Times* photo)

When I painted this image and shared it on social media there were the usual “likes” but little commentary. Few comments. No one said how terrible it was that children were held indefinitely in these camps, in the “free” west. Or that similar “immigration removal centres“ also exist in the UK, where people, men women and children, are locked up without time limit. Perhaps, they think “immigrants” and then lose interest. Perhaps people missed the satire of the title “Suffer the Children”?

I drew a very different reaction with the second commission. This was a photograph of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un standing on a bridge. I know plenty about the North Korean leader and I think that North Korea must be a dreadful place for its citizens to live in, as they are lied to, starved and any disent is swiftly punished with time in work camps. Also know that that we in the west are told a lot of nonsense about the Korean, such as North Koreans only being allowed a choice of 15 “official“ hair cuts. It all needs to be taken with a pinch-of-salt.

I initially thought this image had been photoshopped. The two figures either side of Kim didn’t look real. In fact they sort of reminded me of a Pink Floyd Album cover, “Wish you were Here”. If you are not familiar with it , it shows of two men in suits shaking hands. One of the men is one fire. As the image was made in 1975, those are real flames. Not photoshopped. Which makes the image especially mesmerising.

Man on fire image from Pink Floyd Album — Pink Floyd “Wish You Were Here”

As I looked athe Kim Jong Un, photograph I realised that two suited men were his security detail. The image was as “real” as the Pink Floyd one, but also just as staged. All photography and images of Kim have to be officially sanctioned. North Koreans can’t draw or paint him unless they are official state artists.

This photograph, then is how Kim wants to be seen. As a relaxed and smiling leader on a modern railway bridge. There are no ordinary North Koreans in sight on the train platform in the distance. If I was a North Korean citizen, the act of making this painting, however, may lead to me and my family spending time in a prison camp, Hence the title “Wish You Were Here” (no question mark) is ironic.

Turns out that this was a new railway bridge in Gwangwon Province and photograph was taken less than a day after Donald Trump called off his planned meeting with Kim. North Korea had said that Kim was still willing to meet Trump “at any time”, so the title is doubly appropriate.

Painting of Kim Jong Un — Wish You Were Here? (Kim Jong Un painting)

Wish You Were Here

When I posted this image on facebook and twitter, hashtagging it #statire, it was met with a storm of outraged comments from people who assumed that it was some sort of endorsement of the North Korean state. I was bemused. I wasn’t expecting this sort of reaction. Is it really very likely that a western artist would paint a fan portrait of a dictator?

There were many outraged comments on how Kim Jong Un killed people in work camps and was an evil man. These came mostly from American and Asian commentators. Interesting, in the light of the fact that Trump’s government imprisons children indefinitely and China also detains muslim uighur people in Xinjiang province. I could go on. Hypocrisy is rife. It’s also interesting, it was only British commentators who got the joke or just commented that it was “bizarre”. I’d be interested to see what sort of reaction I’d get if I painted a portrait of Donald Trump or Putin.

There is a long tradition of satire in Britain and Ireland. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. Hence Jonathan Swift’s famous ‘A Modest Proposal’ which he published in 1729 in which he suggested that the people of Ireland sell their children as food. This outrageous idea was never meant to be taken as face value. Satire is never meant to be taken at face value yet in this social media era things often are, which is why we are all such suckers for fake news, no matter how outrageous it is.

We can scoff at Trump supporters who believed his lies about Clinton and the pizzagate conspiracy but just yesterday a lot of people on twitter in the UK got worked up about a supposed protest by the far right against the new vegan sausage rolls. These sausage rolls had been introduced by Greggs the Bakers. It’s a long story, but a right wing TV commentator Piers Morgan had started the “controversy” when he called the company out on Twitter calling them ‘PC-ravaged clowns’ writing: “Nobody was waiting for a vegan bloody sausage.”

This tweet appeared in my feed yesterday. So as you can see the tweet was “liked” thousands of times and there were many outraged and puzzled comments about how the far right were pathetic and stupid.

Five hours after the original tweet the person who posted it tweeted, backtracked, presumably after realising he’d got it wrong and another tweet claiming it was a “joke” or “banter”, as he called it.

The traditional print media put everyone right, eventually.

So we all need to slow down and think about what we are looking at. Take a minute to see beyond the surface. I’ll leave you with an quote from Jonathan Swift to ponder.

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If you are interested in a commission, satirical or otherwise, please get in touch here.

Posted on August 17, 2018February 4, 2019 by emma cownie — 20 Comments

New York Commission

This is a commission piece I have been working on this week. The brief was to paint this beautiful sunlit New York apartment. I was sent a number of photos to work from, the plates and dishes had to vanish, so the main focus of the work was the light and shadow on the patterned table cloth.

A number of New York water towers could be seen outside. I was quite intrigued by these water towers. I had no idea that they were a feature of the Manhattan skyline. I looked up some more photos of these urban water towers and was quite blown away by how many there are!

Sadly the water towers are not a big feature of the painting, but you can see two of them quite clearly from window on the right hand side of the painting.

I love the clean lines of the shadows cast by the window on the table and the parquet flooring and decided that clarity was essential in the composition. So I played around with the original image using an open source program called Gimp (which is a lot like Photoshop) and simplified the image. I “cleared” the table and removed the sleeping hound on the carpet. The resulting images was far from perfect but gave me a claener image to work from.

Empty Table — After “Gimping” – an empty table

I further simplified the image by painting a plain rug. I also lighten certain parts of the painting, such as the wall behind the table. In this way I wanted to create a feeling of airiness and light.

I also lightened the red chair on the right hand side so that it could seen more easily seen and its beautiful curves more easily appreciated. This way it became an integral part of composition, with the red theme in the buildings on the left window, reddish shadows on the wooden flooring being balanced by the red carpet, chair and red in the painting above it.

The shadows have exciting dynamic to them; with the cool shad

ow across the table cloth contrasting with the hot shadows cutting across the floor. My favourite part of the painting was the slice of sunlight on the table leg.

The client, I am pleased to say, loved it. She was very generous in her praise, saying “it is more truthful, beautiful than real life!”

Want to commission your own unique piece of art? Click here.

Posted on September 12, 2016November 17, 2018 by emma cownie — Leave a comment

Fish and Chips in the Uplands

Painting of Nightime Urban scene. — Night Jacks (SOLD)

Delighted to have Sold this classic “urban folk” painting “Night Jacks” to a collector in Utah in the US via Artfinder !

“The title of this expressionist “urban folk” painting takes it’s title from Hopper’s “Night Hawks” – I have “Britishized” Hopper’s painting which was set in an American diner by using a British alternative or even equivalent the ever present Fish and Chip shop instead as it seemed appropriate. The second part of the title, Jacks, refers to a name we have here in Swansea for people who come from Swansea.”