Maze

Artwork details: Watersoluble pencil over detail and wash in black ink, 9 x 9 inches (23 x 23 cm), 2003.

'Maze' - drawing by Nancy Farmer.
Maze

This one took me such a long time - the trouble was I got rather into working out the perspective mathematically, and had a look at some constructions in perspective of chequed floors... and then I noticed that if the floor was constructed in a certain way, with three vanishing points not all on the same level, the result was a gently curved floor like something seen through a slightly fish-eye lens. And I got all excited (in a nerdy way) and started constructing the skeleton of the picture in such a way that everything kind of curved in, but mathematically so. And after about 30 hours of buggering about with perspective and generally experimenting I finally got round to doing the actual picture. The stone balls took me long enough in themselves, as if you look closely you'll see each one is a map of the world.

There's no point looking for any meaning in this, by the way - I simply like the idea of a maze and I put stuff in that I thought would be interesting...

On the subject of mazes and perspective, a more recent painting is Mrs Monotaur II (click the thumbnail to see it), where I was completly cavalier about any real use of perspective and, basically, cheated. I like this approach, also! But the difference is that the floor of the Maze in Mrs Minotaur II is not all level, and the tiles are not all square - in the picture of the Maze above there is nowhere to hide any mistakes or miss-matches. Besides, the crow would know if I'd cheated, and he'd tell the little girl - and then there'd be trouble...

All images and prints are © Nancy Farmer. Please email me if you wish to reproduce any of these images, or see my permissions page in the 'info' section.

Prints & Original Artwork

You can now buy prints of my work (and a few originals) in my Etsy Shop. If you would prefer to buy direct from me, or you cannot find what you are looking for in the shop, feel free to email me instead: mail@nancyfarmer.net. If you are interested in original artwork, I do intend to post a list of currently available artworks in due course, but I'm in the process of moving and re-building a main website, so for the meantime please also email me for more information on originals, and also commissions.