This composition was based around the penny
whistle player that sometimes sits on Queen’s road. He looks to be a homeless person as his
clothes are grubby and even his shoes appear to have been repaired with glue and
hand stitching.
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| Original reference photo |
I liked the idea of making him the focal
point as this seems to be the opposite of the reality, where as a rule the
public tend to ignore people like this who seem to be on the outskirts of
society. I was looking at the aspect
that he is not fully involved in the system and for whatever reason he doesn’t
fully participate in a usual or expected role in society. However, to me he appeared quite content and
happy. He was more than happy for me to
take photos, even playing more each time I brought the camera up to my
eye. So in my painting I wanted to
portray this, him being quite happy, opting out, content while watching all of
the others rushing around. To further emphasise
this point I put a businessman going up some steps to the side of him. The businessman I purposely made nondescript,
as he was representative. I wanted to
make him seem to disappear into greyness and darkness of office world by using
flat grey tones with little definition and contrast around the top of him. In the original reference picture he was
carrying a red bag, which I considered too vibrant, so changed this to a more sombre
brown one.
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| Original reference photo |
I changed the original setting of the piper
to coincide with the idea of offices and traditional official type
buildings. I used a picture I had taken
locally of what was originally a cinema but is now an evangelical church.
I wanted to imply the consumer-focused
world by means of the advert on the wall behind. I wanted something advertising yet another
thing we don’t need but work 9 – 5 to buy.
The TV add seemed a good choice in that the TV serves as a means to
further impress and condition us.
Whilst wanting the piper to look colourful,
I had to compromise this in order to incorporate the dirt on his clothes so
that he didn’t become just a busker, but also homeless. I wanted him to appear content as if to point
out that you can be happy in other ways, with a more simplistic life that is
not about possessions.
I’m sure in reality he has quite a personal
story and toyed with the idea of making his money collection pot a felt army
hat. (A lot of ex army individuals sadly
do end up homeless). I was originally
going to put a bag of chips on the ground with the Financial Times as the
wrapper. Having painted the newspaper
though I decided it ironic to make this his money pot and painted some coins
in.
The chips and a coffee cup were to
symbolise his simple food needs having been met and I still kept the coffee
cup.
I thought hard about the bag he was sitting
on. For a while thinking ‘Homebase’
would be a good choice in respect of the bag being as good as his home and
possibly containing all of his worldly possessions. The Homebase logo colours were no good though
as based on my overall colour scheme I knew I wanted it to incorporate
red. I had already changed his trousers
to brown due to the overall colour scheme as well. I found a M & S bag for life image online
with an apt message which I felt tied in with my general message and theme and
so used that for reference.
I had intended to paint a fictional band
flyer on the wall but before I did I realised it made more sense compositionaly
and in meaning to have this on the ground.
The fictional band name ‘The System’ was used to further impress the
idea of the system we’re are forced to participate in. I wanted it to appear that the flyer had just
happened to land on the ground and that’s why it was there, yet by having the
tip of the piper’s foot on it, it would symbolise his rejection of this
system.
One of my first thoughts had been the
possibility of giving the piper a jester’s hat as I liked the idea he was
mocking and laughing at the rest of us in the rat race rushing around while he
had time to enjoy playing music. This I
decided deviated too much from my original character so instead, more subtly
gave him harlequin patterned socks.
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