Art by K. Gill: June 2013

Porius (401) - (2013) oil on canvas, 24x24 in. For sale on Etsy.

My clay model of a Celtic deity sits in front of my drawing of a still from one of my first Vine videos, which shows me sitting up late at night struggling with Porius, a doorstop of a book by John Cowper Powys about a Welsh prince meeting Merlin and King Arthur and various other people and enduring several battles and other hardships. At least I think that's what it was about. It's all kind of a blur now. I had to stay up late to finish reading the thing, one chapter per day. Here is the Vine: https://vine.co/v/b2dtKI1zjTt I chose to read Porius because, like I say in my little video, I was trying to learn about the Celts. Really, I was trying to get more of a general feeling about the Celts instead of just picking up a non-fiction book to read. I had a couple of those, too. One book was the source of the photo that my clay model was based on. The painting changed dramatically as I worked on it. Eventually I started to feel like the Celtic deity could be a symbol for Porius himself in a way.

The soundtrack for this painting is the Afro Celt Sound System Radio station on Pandora. That's what I listened to both while reading the book and making the painting.

Universidad (617) - (2013) 24x24 in., oil on canvas. For sale on Etsy.

A sliced kiwi fruit rests on a plate in front of my drawing of a detail of a mosaic mural in Caracas, Venezuela. The mural is “A Static Element in Five Positions ” by Oswaldo Vigas and is located in the University City of Caracas, a UNESCO site filled with noteworthy architecture, sculptures, and murals. I play a little randomizing game to choose the subject matter for my art. My three random elements for this painting were the color Campus Blue (color #617 in Naomi Kuno's Colorscape book), the color chartreuse, and northern South America.

I ate all the kiwi fruit that I used for the painting. (The kiwi fruit in the painting is a stylized composite of several different fruit.) By doing this, I discovered that the kiwi fruits are often sold while they're still unpleasantly hard and unripe. They can be ripened, but they still just weren't all that great.