#10 – Requiem pour une fleur
April – May 2015
Acrylic on canvas (1m x 1m)
Mozart’s Requiem in D minor has been the main inspiration for this painting.
My love for Mozart’s Requiem
I absolutely love this piece of music which I first encountered during my studies as a teenager in musical education classes.
This Requiem has always been a source of comfort for my soul, particularly the strong tutti and the wonderful harmonies for four voices throughout the piece.
I bought a tape of Leonard Bernstein’s version of Mozart’s Requiem at seventeen. I used to play that tape at full blast on my Walkman to accompany the darker moments of my student life, whenever I needed to let the tears flow in peace.
I was lucky to sing the Requiem in a one-day choir as soprano voice in Edinburgh about 20 years ago as part of a music project with a professional orchestra and soloists. And I had the privilege to listen to it live in Prague with a dear friend of mine just 10 years ago, in January 2006. Both were amazingly moving experiences.
My interpretation of the painting
My canvas took shape and transformed while being inspired by this wonderful piece of music as I listened to it on repeat while painting.
The main flower, formed with thick and urgent brush strokes, is striking against a stormy background and will soon be blown away by the wind. She is not afraid of the storm. She is at peace with this idea of impermanence and will soon make room for other flowers whose seeds are blowing in the strong gusts of wind.
The blasts of yellow on the canvas are like bursts of wonderfully strong music chords, strong in colour and appearance but weeping at the same time. Unlike the white flower which just is, these smaller, yellow things, long to be seen and ask for attention in their striking colour.
Fly away in peace, beautiful flower, accompanied by the gorgeous music of Mozart’s Requiem…
*** This painting is one of the first ones that I sold in 2016, alongside two other flower-inspired paintings Everybody’s Darling and Sandra & Charlotte, to a private collector in the United Kingdom ***
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