Transcriptions of artworks in the Western canon.

The Muse (after Bonnard)

As an exercise in transcription of works regarded as masterpieces in Western art history, I chose one of Bonnard’s frequent paintings of his wife in domestic interiors, a nude in the bath. Bonnard’s vibrating colours, patterning marks and fluid forms lent it to re-imagining in fabric scraps fine wire and coloured thread. Dissatisfied with reproducing the work in two-dimensions, I stretched it over a wonky wire armature, gave it a back of roughly stitched tea-dyed muslin, and manipulated its shape to suggest precarious balance. As I stitched this work, it became a meditation on the position of the (usually male) artist’s (usually female) muse. In animating the image into three dimensions I was attempting to give her a sense of movement and agency that is perhaps not present in the original.