Family Fables
Anna Magruder
December 6-24, 2011
This body of work began as a call to the public to submit photographs of their favorite family members or moments. A photo can convey so much. Memories. Emotions. Lifestyles. Personalities. Interests. And a great deal more. For this project, the artist, Anna Magruder, set out to reinterpret the special moments in oil paint.
Sorting through the beautiful photos, Anna was touched by the diversity of subject matter and warm sentiments they captured. As she pored over her options, she was surprised to find herself strongly drawn to the idea of matching her interpretation about the essence of the moments or individuals’ personalities with the animal world to see where it took the story. Anthropomorphism, the bringing of human qualities to non-human entities, has strong associations with art and story-telling from ancient times through today. Whether in mythology or fairy tales, personifying animals with human qualities helps us more quickly find deeper meanings in a narrative or understand who someone is.
For many of us, the moments captured in a favorite photograph can evoke a time in our lives that feels like a fairytale. Or they may represent someone from our family who we never met, but we feel like we know either through close study of their face or family legends. In these paintings based on select photos from all of the submissions, Anna has used an illustrative style to draw out the emotions, sentiments or personality traits that had the strongest impact on her in a way that a straight-forward portrait might not. The result is a whimsical blend of the familiar and fantastical that tells an old and a new story.
BIO: Anna Magruder is a Portland, Oregon artist and illustrator. Drifting between realism and surrealism, she loves recreating vintage America, reimagining the lives and stories of people in found old photos, or just exploring the emotional color of faces in the crowd.
Family Fables
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