15-Helena03
©1992 Craig Ashby
Collage
3.75″ x 3.75″

Fifteenth in the series and third of Helena Christensen. I should say here at the beginning that it’s the best of Helena.

Once again I return to the use of a black and white image surrounded by color. It just works too well for me. This time the image is cribbed from a Karl Lagerfeld campaign. The destruction of the main figure adds beautifully to the whole.

How about a Swatch watch face for a halo and tiny moth wings for angel wings? My only crit on the halo is that the rays emanating from the watch could have been orange or yellow. To pick up the colors of the satellite image that serves as the background. But I am just being overly picky.

When I said earlier that I had made paintings of these images I mentioned that two had not been converted. I wanted to do two bigger pieces to anchor the set. I never made those larger pieces. This was one of the two. The other is coming up shortly.

Back at the time, I was converting lots of images into paintings. All of them failed. I now know the issue. I started with a great collage that was impulsive and vibrant and then I over thought it.

The PR-RAW series is a great example that I can make great paintings. If I start out with the sole purpose of painting and let it remain painting. No collage turned into a painting. The lesson learned is let collage be collage and painting be painting. If it ends up mixed media and a bit of both fine. Just as long as the nugget of what it is remains respected.