Venice Carnival. Once upon a time in Venice.
Source of inspiration
This portrait of a lady was born from my impressions of the Venice Carnival. It takes place every February in the magical city of Venice.
Among the multilingual crowd of tourists, ladies and gentlemen dressed in elaborate carnival costumes strolled and posed for photographs. My gaze was drawn to an unknown lady dressed in a dark blue dress reminiscent of the 18th century. On the soft, smoky background of Venice, she was like a ghost of the past in the present. The gilded arabesques on her dark blue dress shimmered faintly, hinting at past luxury. The half-open black fan in her hands created an intangible barrier – a fragile boundary between her and her surroundings, between the imaginary and the real. For in Venice the boundary between reality and illusion is as fluid as the waters of the lagoon…
Venice itself, a venerable old lady in a mask and velvet, under layers of paint and gilded lace, serves as an eternal stage for this incessant masquerade. The sounds of polyphonic crowds of tourists are carried along the Venetian streets, flooded with the soft Italian sun during the day or the flickering light of lanterns in the evening, and the shadows of the past dissolve in the Venetian canals.
Here reality and illusion are intertwined; beauty and deception, memory and oblivion – the eternal Venetian carnival, in which the past dances with the present… and in this grandiose performance we are all just passers-by in the endless flow of time…
Technique
I chose a mixed technique to create this painting: watercolors on canvas overlaid with gold foil (imitation gold) and covered with fixing liquid. Through a layer of gold dust like a patina of time and a hint of the illusory nature of what is happening, a light and fluid watercolor emerges, conveying the fleetingness of the present moment.
I will send this portrait without a frame, packed in a cardboard envelope.
Look at other watercolor painting of this series: Magic of Venetian carnival
