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Jun. 5th, 2008 06:00 pmToday I went to the Art Gallery with my Art Gallery going friend (my movie going friends have forsaken me, so if anyone wants to see things like Iron Man and Prince Caspian, I'm at your disposal). It was terrific.
The most terrific thing was that I kept looking at paintings I half-knew (having been to most of the lending galleries for the exhibition) and realising how they could interface with my fiction. I kept taking notes and looking way more learned than I actually am.
Paintings are such a brilliant thing for world-building. I walked through the gallery and saw things through other peoples' eyes. The way Turner paints water, the hands creeping up a Van Gogh tree, the inner peace of Monet's waterlilies, the light in any Impressionist painting and the relationship between land and landscape in almost everything.
Which reminds me, there's a bit of myself still laughing at the feet of Christ. The image is the 7th along, here. The equivalent Medieval Jewish images are all in a particular Haggadah, where people come from a science-fictional universe and have bird-faces.
The most terrific thing was that I kept looking at paintings I half-knew (having been to most of the lending galleries for the exhibition) and realising how they could interface with my fiction. I kept taking notes and looking way more learned than I actually am.
Paintings are such a brilliant thing for world-building. I walked through the gallery and saw things through other peoples' eyes. The way Turner paints water, the hands creeping up a Van Gogh tree, the inner peace of Monet's waterlilies, the light in any Impressionist painting and the relationship between land and landscape in almost everything.
Which reminds me, there's a bit of myself still laughing at the feet of Christ. The image is the 7th along, here. The equivalent Medieval Jewish images are all in a particular Haggadah, where people come from a science-fictional universe and have bird-faces.