Gerard M Burns Jan/Feb 2001

Featured Painting : "Orpheus"

"Orpheus"
In common with the majority of my large oils, what we are presented with in terms of the finished piece is often a far cry from my original intentions.

Painting is by its very nature an organic process, particularly those paintings which involve a large number of pictorial elements. A painting can be influenced by a huge number of factors at each stage of its development, ranging from something as simple as "not being able to organise a model on time" to making fairly major alterations to the composition in the final stages. Also there are usually occasions when the painting itself takes control and the things which I think will be OK simply won't paint.

In attempting to retrace my footsteps in the development of this piece, I've gone through the sketchbooks and dug out a couple of the preparatory studies for the painting.

Although they are very rough it is, I think, still possible to see that the original plan for this painting meant that Orpheus himself should be much older than the boy who eventually ended up in the finished piece - (right up to the point where the sketch was transferred onto the canvas).

My reasons for changing were initially fairly practical ones:- the lack of an appropriate model being the major factor. However once the decision was made that the character of Orpheus should be depicted as a young child, the realisation dawned that the child is much more appropriate because a child is far more "universal". Adulthood by its very nature implies a degree of "life having been lived " and carries with it a certain amount of baggage. Patrick however (the model is my youngest son Patrick) is completely unselfconscious and natural - ideal for a painting of a boy who believed that he could exert control over all other creatures simply by the power of his music.