Original Irish painting of a mystical Mayan Indian in the midst of the rainforest. by

Description

My painting, ‘Blue Mayan beneath the Canopy’, was painted on top of a previous painting which I completed in 2011. In January 2022 I went into my studio in Sandycove, and propped up against the wall was a number of paintings and blank canvases.  I saw a face peering at me from one of these canvases, which was partially covered by the canvases in front of it. I then realised that this was part of a painting I had done of a holiday location, Menton in the south of France, the canvas now being 90 degrees on its side. What was showing was an archway with a tree in front of it and a parasol underneath. It now formed what seemed to me a face, or at least two eyes and a nose, and I mentioned this to my mother and my sister. In a sense of bemusement, I recalled the story I heard of Kandinsky, returning at dusk to his studio, and entering through the French doors from his garden to see a most unusual painting. It was a painting he had been working on which had been propped upside down against the wall. Apparently this is what led Kandinsky to go down the route of abstract art. I took a photo of my similar situation, part of the Menton painting that resembled a face, and my first thought was it could almost be an Indian portrait. Subsequently, I painted on top of the original painting, using some references of Mayan Indians, to complete the painting as it is now. I was careful to retain some of the original and initial transformation I had observed. I did not want to simply paint a Mayan Indian from some of the references I had sourced, I wanted to evolve what I had observed. I then painted the surrounding rainforest jungle in which to place my Mayan warrior.