This one is a painting from memory but turned out a bit more sinister-looking
than I'd originally intended (quelle-surprise).
 |
| 'Hydra Horsey', 2019, oil on canvas by British artist, Wayne Chisnall |
It's inspired by something that I saw a few months ago when I went to
see a school play with my brother, in which his oldest son was performing. The
play was a mash-up of various Greek myths and in it the Hydra, a multi-headed serpentine
monster, was played by a group of kids, all of which were clad in black with
black tights on their heads. After the play I was standing outside with my bro
whilst the cast of the play were running around the playing field, full of
post-performance excitement. Whilst chatting with my brother I noticed in the
distance, two of the Hydra heads from the play were on all fours and giving
rides to a couple of even smaller kids, who were using the legs from the tights
as reins. It was a bizarre and funny sight. I remember thinking at the time ' I
must do painting or two of this'.
 |
| 'Hydra Horsey' (work in progress), 2019, oil on canvas by British artist, Wayne Chisnall |
I posted some photos of the painting on social media, during the various
stages of completion, and received a few comments from people likening the rider
figure to that of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. This wasn't initially intentional
but I guess that there's often a lot of things going on subconsciously, and
when you make artwork it's sometimes hard to block out all the external
influences that one gets bombarded by.
But that's also the beauty of art; it's a language with multiple
readings and constructed from layers of diverse thoughts and ideas. The process
of creating art is one of constant discovery, where each brush stroke or
unintentional mark can suggest an alternate direction. I'm pretty sure that the
children I saw on the playing field that day were girls (although they were quite
far away in the distance) and when I started the painting the figure of the
rider I wasn't sure what gender it was going to be. All I knew was that it was
going to have a mop of blond hair. Maybe the Trump/Johnson comments influenced
the direction of gender or maybe the work had already decided the direction.
