The creation of Narcissus

Narcissus started out as a concept for an old master style ‘cartoon’ painting, inspired by a cartoon by Michelangelo for a ceiling fresco… more on that later, as a male version may follow.

From the initial sketch, and then transferring that to a larger canvas, it became clear that the ‘cartoon’ idea wasn’t going to work… but what to do?

I felt the form of Narcissus (as she became) was beautiful…but she couldn’t float in the painting alone. Was she Eve in the garden of Eden… classical themes kept coming to me but none seemed right.

So, rather than do nothing, I let the form continue to inspire me. Layers and layers, and still she might have merged into Eve, but - the pool at the bottom (which was me just roughing out the canvas with some colours, without even any thought of it being a pool, just seemed to emerge)…So she became Narcissus. This painting took over 120 hours to complete, almost creating itself, little by little. I hope you love her as much as I do.