As many of you probably know already, my main body of work is on glass. The backside to be precise, as I have described in "What is Hinterglas". I start with a pencil drawing and then continue with thin, transparent glazes of color.
In my recent works, I have put more emphasis on the drawing alone, as coloring it often pushes that part into the background... although it is actually a few nanometer closer to the viewer, once you turn the finished piece in the right direction.
Today I would like to present such a piece, where I only worked with graphite pencil and a light blue-ish gray background.
"Athena on the Sun Chariot" was a commissioned piece. Athena is the clients favorite goddess and I put her on the sun chariot, as that created a connection to his wife.
To me it was also important to not just depict another statue like Greek goddess or, god forbid, some fantasy movie like super being. But I wanted to bring her into our time. And she is a warrior after all, so she had to have a weapon. I figured, today she wouldn't throw around a spear, so why not use a smart phone instead?
Patience please, huge files ahead
Instead of the aegis, I gave her a semi mechanical armor:
Instead of the spear she is often shown with, I gave her the handle bar to steer her sun chariot in her right hand. Since she is associated with the "owl", I placed one on the device.
Did I mention that I like extreme vertical formats? I often use an aspect ratio of 1:2 or even 1:3. But here I took it a big step further. I usually associate ancient Greece with columns and therefore I wanted that to be an aspect in this painting. In the end, I found it best, to express that in the shape of it and made it 7,5x75 inches (20x200 cm), a whopping 1:10 aspect ratio!
If you look close enough, you'll see, that of course, she is wearing high heels... (just a hint for another Greek "goddess"... 😉😉 Ms @ruth-girl)
And before you get disappointed with the sun chariot, let me explain, that I imagined it as a futuristic flying "segway", and one can only see the machinery of it.
Of course, as with all my glass originals, I made the frame as well. The lower part is covered with aluminum leaf as a metal of our time. The upper part is olive wood, as Athena is also associated with the olive tree. The "crown" of the frame is made of five layers of olive wood and five layers of glass. In Tarot (I worked on a big artwork on the theme for several years) 5 represents the "divine" as in the V - The High Priest. Both materials together are 10, standing for destiny.
@mira13 and @sukhasanasister would be able to add a lot more about numerological aspects. To me the numbers represent major arcana of the Tarot and I use a more intuitive approach.
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All photos/scans by me of my own artwork done in my special technique as introduced in What is Hinterglas?
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