Video: Portrait of Elizabeth II in Self-Isolation, the Mother Goddess and the Magical Worlds: Magical Realism Miriam Escofet
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
While the whole world was in uncertainty and tension due to the coronavirus epidemic, political upheaval and economic instability, artists continued to create masterpieces. In July 2020, a new official portrait of Queen Elizabeth II by surrealist artist Miriam Escofet was unveiled digitally. The reactions to him were mixed …
Miriam Escofet was born in Barcelona in 1967, left sunny Spain as a teenager and ended up in foggy England, but retained her love for the Catalan language and culture of her native country. She very early became addicted to painting, because her father, Jose Escofet, is also an artist (a couple of times they even did joint exhibitions and published several books together). The house of the Escofet family was simply littered with art objects, valuable books, many unusual things that inspired and still inspire Miriam.
The artist studied ceramics and 3d graphics - that is why, perhaps, her works are so illusory volumetric and tangible. Miriam, like her father, searched for her own creative path on her own, experimenting with materials and technologies. Today she is one of the key figures in the artistic life of Great Britain. Since 2011, she has been teaching art at the iconic St. Martins College, whose alumni have been shaping the UK's cultural environment for many years. And, of course, she is actively engaged in painting herself - every year she participates in prestigious art exhibitions. Miriam's work is kept in art galleries around the world, she published several books with her father, her paintings adorn the covers of many publications. Since 1996, seven personal exhibitions of the artist have taken place.
The artist's works are classified as magical realism, she herself uses the word "hyperrealism" and in her work starts from the allegories and ornamentation of Gothic, Renaissance and Classicism.
The main thing for Escofet is the transfer of space, high detail, extreme realism of a fantastic situation. It combines natural motives and objects of art, antique images and fragments of architecture, twisted tree trunks and mysterious masks, her world is full of strange symbols, so recognizable and at the same time defying precise interpretation.
And even everyday images - for example, portraits of the artist's elderly parents - are filled with hidden symbolism, contain something otherworldly. Miriam believes that the task of art is to transfer the viewer to previously unknown worlds, fill him with amazement and admiration, surprise and expand consciousness.
Her surreal landscapes and still lifes are not just paintings. The artist creates many sets, models and dummies in order to achieve the fullest possible transfer of images. Her workshop is littered with intricate structures, antiques and objects she has created herself, which she uses for performances.
Escofet paints in oils using the glaze technique, applying thin layers of paint one after another - so her paintings look incredibly realistic, photographically accurate. Work on each painting can take several months - until the artist feels that the canvas is finally ready.
The artist's fairy-tale worlds enchant and attract like a magnet, but Miriam Escofet won the recognition of the professional community primarily as a portraitist. In 2014 she became an associate of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters of Great Britain, in 2015 she received the Burke Peers' Foundation Award for Classical Portrait Artists.
In 2018, she won the most prestigious portraiture award, BP Portrait, for her work, Angel at My Table. The artist portrayed her mother, a fragile gray-haired woman, at the kitchen table, drinking tea. The work is done in light colors, almost in shades of white, it breathes with incredible calmness, something unearthly. This painting has several symbolic levels - here is the love of Miriam's mother for family tea parties, and the mother figure as an archetype … The artist says that she wanted to "convey the idea of the Universal Mother, who is at the center of our psyche and emotional world." On the table, closer to the viewer, there is a tiny figure of Nika of Samothrace, shining and trembling.
In 2020, Miriam Escofet worked for seven months on the creation of a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This is not the first portrait of the queen made by Miriam, but, according to her, the most successful. She strove to convey the life energy of the queen and the aura of her greatness, her humanity and warmth. Elizabeth in an elegant blue dress sits in an armchair - as if for a moment she looked up from her tea to look at her interlocutor. On the table next to her is a lush bouquet of flowers and an elegant cup. Behind Elizabeth you can see a fragment of the portrait of her great-grandmother, Queen Charlotte, painted by the famous artist Thomas Gainsborough. Miriam only met with the queen twice to make preliminary sketches. Due to the coronavirus epidemic, work on the painting was carried out "remotely", and its presentation was held in July this year remotely, in the format of a video conference.
True, it was not without criticism - for example, the Telegraph calls the new portrait kitsch and boring, pointing out that against its background even the scandalous portrait by Lucian Freud deserves approval. However, this did not disappoint Miriam at all! After all, the queen herself warmly approved the portrait and wished the artist as many new interesting projects as possible. She was also amused by a small detail: the teacup on the table is … empty. The fact is that instead of a drink, Escofet "placed" the emblem of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs there. It is in the office of the ministry that the original of the work will hang. Elizabeth II expressed a desire to see the painting live as soon as possible, but so far this is impossible - Her Majesty is still in self-isolation.
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