The Vision of Constance

Alanna Blake

Who says the minutiae of contemporary life can’t receive the same artistic treatment as grand, historic narratives? In Alanna Blake’s paintings, the daily is just as dramatic; identities are built, memories are lost, and the pains of growing are more grandiose than are usually given credit. Internal shifts are captured with sensitivity, and Blake uses composition and colour palettes drawn from the art historical canon to imbue scenes with life. Colours shift, as amber fields and midnight skies fall around pensive figures battling with elements, internal and external. Influences include Francisco Goya’s etchings depicting the ambiguity of human nature, and W.H. Auden’s famous poem “Musee de Beaux Arts”, where the human trowels on, and ‘the sun shone/ As it had to’.