Wagner Ring Cycle Painting – Los Angeles – Wotan the Wanderer – for California Art Club show
The Wanderer’s Journey
(Wotan as the Wanderer)
24 x 18 oil on canvas
This painting has been selected to be included in a special exhibition coordinated with the production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle in Los Angeles this May.
It will be exhibited, for sale, at the Cathedral of Our Lady of The Angels from May 10-July 16
For more information about the CAC’s participation in this festival.
This painting depicts a moment in the opera “Siegfried’ when an aged Wotan (Odin) takes on the guise of a wanderer to roam the earth. Weary and downtrodden, he seeks out wisdom from the earth mother, Erda, who sleeps in her cave. His two companion ravens, Thought and Memory, accompany him on his journey. His hand clenches his ash spear.
My model for this painting is a much younger man, but he is Nordic so I thought that this would be a good starting point for the exploration.
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I’ve been gone on a painting trip to Central California with the California Art Club, and was in such a hurry to make preparations for the weeklong paintout that I didn’t have a chance to post this before. The paint out was fun, but marred by a rainstorm that hit on the 2nd day and continued throughout our time there. We stayed on, though, catching patches of sunshine and moving around San Luis Obispo Country to find places where the light was better. All in all, it was a wonderful trip, and I’ll be posting some of my plein air paintings here soon.
annie
April 26, 2010
Great to see another portrait, Karen, since all of the ones that you do are on my Favorites list. I always love the expression that you get in the eyes and mouth.
annie
wendy
April 27, 2010
Good idea for you to try something different from landscape.
What do you think of the ‘Ring’ cycle? Some of the music is amazing – like the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ but some of the solos….well, they go on and on! A great story though.
Wendy