Wednesday, June 17

The Haunted Studio of Russel Connor - "My love-affair with the past"

I've just found Russell Connor's Haunted Studio site and I'm amazed by his work. You can see the gallery to see his encounters. There is a video and he talks about his work. That's how he describes "Open 24 Hrs" above, 2008.
"This painting is a return to my Masters in Pieces series, in which I combine my version of two famous paintings, or details from them, making a new narrative and a new composition. OPEN 24 HRS is an homage to a favorite American painter, Edward Hopper. One of his greatest and most popular paintings is Nighthawks, 1942, in the collection of the Chicago Art Institute. On a darkened street corner we see, through the window of a brightly lit coffee shop, a couple of customers and the counterman, looking like a scene from a film noir. I wondered, if the shop stayed open around the clock, what they might look like in the light of day, Now, across the street, we can make out the red brick buildings from Hopper's Early Sunday Morning, 1930, one of the treasures of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York."