Life Art


Naked American Gothic was painted in June 2018 in acrylic on to a base drawing using marker pens. Image is 1600 by 1560 and displayed reduced (some 37%). The location is from the Dingle House, Iowa, using a photograph on the World Wide Web (see below).



This was a rescue job from the start. I nearly destroyed the canvas. There is not the precision, or indeed the precision of the distortions, as in Grant Wood's American Gothic, but such a precision style was not intended. What was intended, however, was some sort of accuracy and proportion. The difficulty came in not wanting to draw the building first and have its marks go through the women, so they were put in first and the house drawn around them. I drew using coloured market pens! The woman on the right is based on but deliberately deviates from someone I know. The woman on the left is another use of Abigail Wright as in Sarah Small's music and display Tableau Vivant of The Delirium Constructions.


At first I uploaded to display the image below. The mistakes were easier to see on screen: the right hand woman's forearm was too long and her hand too small; the trees on the right were in correct position, but on my painting they needed distance and so these were too far forward; I also needed to make a number of minor but significant improvements. The photograph below was almost the perfect capture, whereas the others needed a small amount of perspective lines/ rotation adjustment. The colour result was also different, and yet for all I have tried to match them to the painting. Colour and slight position variations between the two images are due to photographic processing; the attempt each time is accuracy to the painting - but then lighting conditions do change.



So the first improvement as below was much better, but I was still unhappy.



A reminder then as at the top: the arm is thicker still, and better positioned. The paint applied to the woman on the right is thicker and smoother. Although a necessity it also looks better on the actual painting next to the woman on the left.



Below is the precisely painted American Gothic by Grant Wood in 1930. You can see that the window is elongated and that the house is somewhat recoloured. If I'd have painted this similarly, I would have worried if the shed (was it there?) was too high up. The trees are completely out of style to the rest; if they are meant to be idealised and warmer than the rest, then the sky strikes me as a little dirty. The spire and nearby shape is a puzzle.


 

Adrian Worsfold