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Pigment ink and acrylic on canvas, 40" x 50", 1993
This portrait of Kahlo, based on a photograph by Imogen Cunningham in 1930, San Francisco (reproduced in 'Frida Kahlo : The Camera Seduced' , publisher Chronicle Books, 1992), was inspired by the sad sensitivity of Kahlo's gaze and the tragic blood-soaked story of her suffering. Her eyes immediately struck me - their intensity and sadness. In her own words "I knew that a battlefield of suffering was in my eyes. From then on, I started looking at the lens, unflinching, unsmiling, determined to show that I was a good fighter to the end." The source photograph by Imogen Cunningham was taken of Kahlo five years after the terrible accident that was the source of her pain. I considered using one of her own paintings for background, maybe one depicting Diego Rivera, her husband and reknown muralist, but ended up deciding on a very simple stark image.
The portrait was part of a series of four portraits of painters (the others being Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol), originally created for an article in the National Association of Desktop Publishers Journal. This artwork, an example of one of my early digital paintings, was created freehand directly on my first Macintosh, a Macintosh IIfx (20/160), using a Wacom graphics tablet & pressure sensitive stylus, and Aldus SuperPaint software. I began by filling the image with a gradient, black at the top like an ominous cloud, merging into blood red at the bottom, like the blood in her paintings.
All artwork shown is copyright © 2009 Jeremy Sutton
No reproduction or usage of artwork allowed without written permission of the artist.
All World Wide Rights Reserved
http://www.jeremysutton.com
jeremy@jeremysutton.com
415.641.1221