Here is one of my 212 Productions blogs
A Little Bird Told Me by Julian Quaye
Julian is a Bristol based mixed media artist who creates anthropomorphic characters. In describing the way he works Quaye says:
‘The best way of describing my process is from the first painting of Lou, my first anthropomorph ,who appears in ‘A Little Bird Told Me’. It all started with a picture I saw of Tennessee Williams and to me he looked rakish, dressed in a sharp suit with cigarette in hand. Then I found a picture of a Wymera whilst going through clippings from newspapers that I had saved as future reference material. Strangely ,the head went with the body and it developed from there – I overlaid them and they had the right look.
I play about with sizes to make sure the neck fits the collar size – that is how I work out the dimensions. I may need to make the shoulders wider to fit the shape of the animal – it always starts with them. I then tape the pictures together and do a trace off. It is here that I make any alterations on the tracing. From there, I blow it up to size to fit the canvas.’
Quaye also creates back stories for each of his characters which form an interlinking narrative which one day he hopes will become a book or a film. Of the character Lucky Lou above he writes:
‘World weary Louis with his two little eavesdroppers who gets the dope on everyone who frequents his establishment ‘Lucky Lou’s Lounge’. Where friendships are made and lost and deals are struck and blackmail is rife.’
Auntie G 