The Painting That Started it All and Came Full Circle

The Pre-Raphealite Painting by Millias that I saw and wanted to try and do my own photographic portrait of.

My finished photograph of my version.

Another painting and version of Ophelia which inspired me.

And, two of the photographs that I took in my own verision of it.

This inspired me to dress up as this Ophelia for Halloween one year with one of my art students who wanted to dress up like one of my art dolls. I think she did a really good job!

The doll she dressed up as was the first art doll I ever made. Her name? Ophelia!

Recently, I have started doing digital self-portrait photographs. I took this self-portrait photograph in my own bathtub which I shrouded with dark black fabric, filled to the rim with water and about 4 dozen roses. Why? It has a bit of an "Ophelia" vibe going on.

The more photographs I took, the more I studied the Pre-Raphealites.  The self portrait photograph below is part of my "Prosperine" series which was inspired by Dante Gabriel Rossit's painting above-the famous  "Proserpine"

His imagination and my photograph inspired me to make another one of my art dolls(at this time I had made hundreds of them and learned a lot).  This time, I was focusing on Prosperine's gown and gorgeous, wavy dark hair in the painting. She was to be a gift for dear friend, but ended up in show instead.

(She is in just the beginning phase of getting her costume and hair together in this photo, but now she is done now. More photographs to come!)

Then, after many years of being inspired and making pieces of my own, I was given the opportunity to curate an Art Show in which I asked all the artists to do their own take on the Pre-Raphealites. It was so exciting to see what each artist came up with in their own style!

Above is a large painting that a local artist Justin Cooper did called "Jane Burden Recyled".  I love how he mixed the old with his own unique style!

Almost 15 years later, my original photograph of my first film version of Ophelia was blown up very large as a digital photograph and put in this same show.  No one had ever really seen her, especially this large, and she had never been in one of my shows. What a thrill to come full circle!