'Thessalonike' by Jim Burns

Title:	'Thessalonike'
Date Created:	2018
Copyright:	© (c)Jim Burns
Genre:	Unpublished Art
Mediums:	Oils
Views:	921
Posted:	12/7/2018

Projects: I have a few quite large-scale projects currently in progress.Some are commissions whilst others are personal. Of these latter, one is based on a Keats poem - 'Isabella, or The Pot of Basil' and which I'm calling 'Poor Lorenzo', another called 'Song to the Moon' and which is inspired by the story of Rusalka and in particular the Dvorak opera of that name. A third personal piece is based on the song 'The Garden of Jane Delawney' by late 1960s English electric folk group, Trees. Commissions include a large piece based on A Game of Thrones and also a 'SpaceBabe' painting for a U.S. collector. Some pencil work - drawings of mythological creatures are underway..steadily building up a collection of those. I'm moving slowly away from commercial work - which was mostly bookjacket work in my case - as this territory has been commandeered largely by a brilliant new generation of 'digitally savvy' artists..and whilst I do the occasional digital piece my preference is for painting and in particular I'd like to produce more, large scale personal paintings - wiith maybe a shift away from acrylics on board towards oils on canvas. My retrospective collection 'The Art of Jim Burns: Hyperluminal' was published in the UK by Titan Books in Septemebr 2014.

Thessalonike was a Macedonian princess, half-sister to Alexander the Great. There is a Greek legend of a mermaid who lived in the Aegean Sea for hundreds of years and who was thought to be Thessalonike. The legend states that Alexander, in his quest for the Fountain of Immortality, retrieved a flask of immortal water with which he bathed his sister's hair. When Alexander died his grief-stricken sister attempted to end her life by jumping into the sea. Instead of drowning, however, she became a mermaid passing judgment on mariners throughout the centuries and across the seven seas. To the sailors who encountered her she would ask the question: "Is Alexander the king alive?" - to which the correct answer would be "He lives and reigns and conquers the world”. Given this answer she would allow the ship and her crew to sail safely away in calm seas. Any other answer would transform her into a raging Gorgon, bent on sending the ship and every sailor on board to the bottom.