Fourth drawing inspired by Marie Antoinette

After Jean-Francois Janinet, Marie Antoinette (1775)

I remember sitting in front of a mirror and trying to do my hair like she had. How do you keep it up that high? How do you make those perfect rolls on the side of your head? And the grey... Why did even young girls have grey or white hair? I would use talc powder and cover myself in clouds of sweetness.

A new serie of drawings inspired by Marie Antoinette


After Jean-Etienne Liotard, Portrait de l'archiduchesse Marie-Antoinette d'Autriche a l'age de 7 ans (1762).

 I visited Versailles for the first time when I was 7 years old. That overwhelming palace with its enormous gardens and park was the most beautiful place I had ever experienced. I remember the statues in the Fall light. Golden brown leaves. A soft breeze. The sound of rustling skirts. I remember marble busts with elegant curls. I remember the gold and the candles of the Hall of Mirrors. I remember dancing with my cousin. I remember smiling the whole time. 
 "She was beheaded," said my stepfather. Marie Antoinette has been with me since then and I have read almost every book that has been written about her life. She continues to fascinate me.



9th drawing, day ....?



I always have all kinds of recycleble materials in my studio. I had already cut out some pictures from an old calendar that I wanted to use for another project, and I have stacks old boxes that I like to use as a canvas. Why not practice on cheap materials first, eh?
I started this project with no other idea than to use my new gouache paint box. As I was cutting, assembling and glueing, my thoughts wandered of. I had to think of my little boy who is so unhappy at school, and the image of a child, disconnected appeared.


 "I have a body that feels, a head that thinks and hands that make, but how do I make them all work together? How do I make sense?"

10th day, 8th drawing


Our maison de campagne has no bathroom, no toilet.
It has four rooms. Two bedrooms upstairs.
One salle de séjour downstairs on the left side of the front door.
And a kitchen on the right side. There are stairs in the middle and a big barn behind. 
There's an attic with strange noises. I think there are ghosts.


When my stepfather has to travel, my mother and I stay here alone with a gun behind the front door. My mother says she will never use it. So I practice shooting on empty cans. I always miss.


When we are alone my mother hears a horse on the front steps. In the distance a wolf.

7th day, 7th drawing



Marie Louise is posing with her friends behind the tractor. She is wearing a chemise. So are her friends. The chemise has a flower pattern. I didn't have the patience to draw the flowers. A chemise is worn on weekdays, over a shirt perhaps, no tights. A chemise  covers up any bodily shapes. Stains too. When you are a cook, like Marie Louise, you even wear your chemise on Sunday.
Marie Louise would wash herself every day with a cologne soaked wash cloth, at the mirror by her open door. I have never seen her brush her teeth (except with a knife).

My mother would say that people here look like they had fallen from the puppet box.

6th day, 6th drawing





From 1979 until 1983 I lived in France with my mother and stepfather. Somewhere in the centre of rural France, where no highways went, where old people lived on small farms without toilets. 
This is my mother, probably aged 30 years with our neighbors, Monsieur Robert Debelut and his housekeeper Marie Louise, who was an excellent cook and who had wobbling teeth that she cleened with a knife (!). He was stiff from arthritis and would defecate standing up behind the shed. Beautiful blackberries would grow there. His pants would always have dark stains. Marie Louise would give me a piece of stale brioche every day after school that I would feed secretively to her dog on a leach. She emptied the chamber pot on her front stoop. In Summer the smell would mix with the blossoms of the wisteria that grew abuntantly above her door. In the pouch around her neck, my mother kept her pills against anxiety and depression.

Artless - Roland Berning - 3rd class (part 2)


I also worked on some pen and black ink drawings of the same photo. Discovering that less is more, and black is merciless. Hands are sooo difficult, and sometimes ink will make big, black stains...

But I also discover an ability to play with facial expressions. And I love doing that. For now can't get enough of the sad faces...


To be continued.

Artless - Roland Berning - 3rd class


 This is the self portrait I finished for my mother's birthday. It's me, age 3, very scared and very sad when my photo was taken by a photographer at preschool.

I spent a nice fall afternoon in the garden with the canvas and my paint and brushes. After three hours of painting it was like I kept seeing new elements, the light above the upper lip, and on the tip of the nose.

As you can see, I focused mostly on the face. The hair and the jacket could have used some more concentration. Teacher seemed to be pleased with my progress and encouraged me to use a bigger canvas next time. My work reminded him of the work of American painter Karen Kilimnik, which I find quite flattering.

Artless - Roland Berning - 2nd class

Only a short session for me tonight. There's been some stress at the kids school lately and there's a conference about it tonight. I don't want to miss my entire class for it, so rush over to the East for just an hour.

The assignment for tonight was to choose the cover of a magazine and change something about it. I chose the cover of Time Out Amsterdam because of all the letters (and the fact that we had several lying around the house and it would not matter if I would cut up one). I was wondering what would happen to the lay out and the information if I would cut away all the letters. I started doing this one by one, but as some letters where really small, I feared I would still be at it by Christmas 2011. I decided to cut the letters away in boxes.

The result speaks for itself. Leaving the shape of some letters still intact, the content of the magazine is still understandable. Visually I am quite drawn to the upper right side. I love the irregularity.

Unfortunately I didn't get to see what the others had made with the assignment, because I had to rush off. So I didn't get an other perspective on my own work. It was an interesting little job, that required dedication and concentration, and a willingness to go with a conceptual idea, and work it out till the end.

To be continued.

Artless - Roland Berning - 1st class


First class starts with an introduction round. How I keep hating this. Never know what to say in a few minutes about myself. There is too much to tell. Much happier when we move on to our work.

Teacher asked us to bring something we've been working on recently. I have been fascinated by faces for a while now. Worked with charcoal and ink last year, now I think I am ready for paint. I had made a beginning of my children a while ago, but never finished it. A month ago I picked it up again with the intention of making a likeness of my children. But as the work proceeded, I got frustrated with the look on their face and decided to make two fantasy figures. My children are happy children, these two had a strange look that I could not bend. I just had to go with their sad expression.

Teacher seems really interested, and gives a great deal of attention to my work. I am getting good feedback. He encourages me to really look how a a face is constructed and work with a model, or a photo. There's nothing wrong with that, lots of artists work from photo's. It will teach me to investigate what is really there. He says that my paintings can not be qualified a naive art because it misses some sort of concentration. I could work on that too, but for now I should focus on reality and just see what happens.

He wants me to continue the half finished painting of myself I also brought to show, with the help of the original photo.

Each student in the class gets his full attention. It is very inspiring to look at each others work and hear what teacher has to say about it. He is making comparisons with lots of modern artists, so part of my homework will be to look those up, as I am not familiar with most of them.

To be continued.