Dawn Dudek

Currently Dawn continues to work on her painting series titled Filmscapes. Recently her painting 'Saving Clementine' was selected for the December 2008 exhibition at the Salon de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in the Carrousel du Louvre, Paris under the high patronage of Monsieur Nicolas Sarkozy, President of the Republic of France.

The following is a commentary written by the artist describing her filmscape paintings.

“For many years I have liked the look of film stills, and my experience in animation has made me much more aware of how the single can represent the whole.

Conceptually the series has evolved, conveying more personal interpretations of the stills.There is a now a parallel between the still in its relation to the narrative of the film and my experiences. Memories and emotions are used to create themes within the series. The selected image is abstracted from a timeline, but when isolated and reconstructed it opens itself to more diverse interpretations. The juxtaposition of personal memories on cinematic imagery is a theme that I am continuing to develop.

Deconstructing the frame into top and bottom is one of the most interesting aspects of the work. While making the subject matter more dynamic, it also represents the passage of time and more literally the film frames frozen between one and the next.”

from Dawn Dudek's website.
The top piece, Cleo wears a new hat, is very powerful to me...for some odd, unknown reason, it brought tears to my eyes and I'm not quite sure why. I don't think it's a sad piece but it is very evocative. And that big empty bed is haunting and dominates over this domestic scene.

This work, Saving Clementine, is sexy, obviously, but it's also ambivalent. It feels like a light, lusty moment in time but there's a sense of forboding here as well, like something bad is going to happen to one of these young lovers. But you're unsure of who's ultimately going to be cast as victim or victimizer.
Meeting up on a field makes me a little homesick for the Midwest...I think it's all that clear, white/blue sky...and maybe the football makes me think of high school. Or at the very least, a movie about a high school.