The World of Emmy
By Magali Modoux
Stories behind the artwork
Each piece of artwork is unique and derives from my imagination. As I love texture and details, some paintings can take me up to 100 hours, or more. I calculated once that I spend minimum one hour on each small animal I paint – and much more time on larger animals.
Sometimes I begin a painting with a very precise image in mind of what I want to achieve, and may even draw a sketch on the paper.
Here, I had in mind the vision of an old colonial city in the middle of the South American jungle, with a river going through it. I sketched it, and was not fully satisfied with the drawing, but it gave me what I needed to begin painting
Most of the time, I have a vague idea of where I am going – theme or colors or feeling – and it becomes more precise the further I paint.
When I began the first painting of this collection, I did not know it would be a collection. I just wanted to paint with no constraint, free hand, a crazy tropical garden. At some point the yellow reminded me of India. Therefore I added a tiger and birds of India. Still, it was like something I painted already. I decided to add an arch/gate. And the idea of the “Maharaja’s garden” was born. It led me to think of palaces, painted elephants, and Indian street life. As a result, I did four more paintings following the same theme, but this time with a plan. The more I painted, the clearer the vision I had in mind.
And sometimes, I just play with the colors, brushes and knives without any idea of where I am going. Then, at some point, I look at it and the color “stains” remind me of something, like when watching clouds, and it fuels my imagination.
Here, I had no clue of what would result. I don’t like blue in general and rarely use it as a dominant color. It happened that I had too much blue out on my palette and did not want to loose it. So I took out a medium size flat canvas and began to apply this blue, and play with texture, paints and markers. When finished, it looked like an imaginary undersea landscape. So I decided to add some fishes, and then a turtle to vary the perspective.