The story of my latest painting started out with a book: Santa Muerte – the History, Rituals and Magic of Our Lady of the Holy Death by Tracey Rollin. As mentioned on my previous post, I collect lithographs of Catholic saints and I was curious about this “Skinny Lady”: a relative newcomer among the heavenly host. Not actually venerated nor even approved by the Catholic authorities, Santa Muerte is a female folk saint from Mexico. She is the personification of death and the protector of those living in the fringes of society. The followers of her cult believe by embracing death they will better appreciate life.
Santa Muerte is depicted as a skeleton not afraid to flaunt her femininity. She can wear plain black robes in full grim-reaper style, but more often than not, she is presented in elaborate dresses, long wigs and ornate headpieces. The different parts of Santa Muerte’s persona are divided by colour and her outfits tend to reflect a particular aspect the owner of her figurine wishes to gain favour from, i.e. red for sex and passion, gold for wealth and so on. For aesthetic reasons alone, I chose to paint the emerald glad Niña Verde. According to Tracey Rollin (Santa Muerte, 2017), Niña Verde is the green aspect of Santa Muerte and her most popular function is to deflect and otherwise solve legal problems. Less concerned about escaping justice than making art, I wanted to play with the dress-up element of this particular folk-saint and chose to depict her in the nicest garment I personally own: my wedding dress.
It has been quite some time since I started and finished a figurative piece without a reference point of a physical object and painting “Niña Verde” from my imagination alone was like using muscles I did not remember I had. Quite frankly, like the day after taking on running, I cannot quite tell whether I will have the perseverance to keep at it. For better or for worse, working without a real model for this piece turned out to be helpful. To return to the sports metaphors, if I may, painting from imagination is like riding a bike; you never really forget how it is done.
Surprisingly, it was the background in this portrait that gave me most trouble. First altered from dark slate-ish grey to salmon pink, I finally settled with a teal-to-navy gradient that I was happy with. It is not unusual for me to adjust these types of details when putting a painting together, but changing a background tree times in one small piece has to be a new record.
I personally see parallels between this piece and my past Barbie-works. A female saint of death is just as good of an excuse to paint an over-the-top feminine portrait as a Barbie-doll would be. Besides, I have plans to give objects a break and return to more traditional portraiture. In able to do that, I needed to practise my costume painting skills. The reason I originally started shifting towards object painting was my interest in replicating different materials and textures; painting glass, silicone and aluminium being my favourites. These new pictures I am currently sketching out on canvas will feature a plethora of different types of textiles and hopefully, some fur too.
But that is a subject of another blog.
Until next time,
Tiina x
tiina lilja 