Vanity (2018) Original Mixed-media Painting by Adam Grose MA PGCE

This painting explores the vanity of the image and the image making process. Throughout the last ten years we have seen the rise of technology and applications that have seen the rise of the selfie and the democratisation of image-making. This democratisation has shifted the way images are created, exploring new ways of presenting images to the global community.

This painting layers various figures that inter-mingle, creating new forms of figuration, adding colours to divide and mix together, forming new experimental images, exploring ideas set down by the Cubists and Colour Theorists.

'Vanity is the excessive belief in one's ... attractiveness to others. Prior to the 14th century it did not have such narcissistic undertones, and merely meant futility'

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Futility By Wilfred Owen

Move him into the sun—
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields half-sown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds—
Woke once the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides
Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?

Materials used:

Tempera and Acrylic on Wallpaper Paper

Details:

• Mixed-media painting on Paper
• One of a kind artwork
• Size: 56 x 125 x 0.1cm (unframed) / 56 x 125cm (actual image size)
• Signed on the front
• Style: Organic
• Subject: People and portraits