Painting reveals art’s imitation of real life

THE dramatic crash of the US Airways plane into the Hudson River last week appears to be depicted in a new painting by renowned artist Pauline Bewick which was created last December, weeks before the event.

“It’s just coincidence,” the artist said yesterday.

In a series of “currency and collapse” paintings focused on New York, Ms Bewick said she herself was taken aback by the apparent correlation between last week’s airplane drama and one of her three new paintings.

For any doubting Thomases, or their female equivalents, who might feel that this painting was just run-out after the event, Kerry-based Ms Bewick said she has “plenty of proof”, if any was needed, of the fact that the paintings were created last December.

Nonetheless, she agrees that the painting looks like an abstract depiction of the air accident in the Hudson River.

Her intention was to show buildings. That one of them should be like a plane crashing into the New York waterway was “strange and weird”.

The new paintings haven’t gone on public show yet. Ms Bewick, who regards New York as a “very vital” one of her favourite places, hopes that they may make their debut in the Big Apple.

The works of “subliminal thoughts on the world financial crisis” are multi-media plywood and paint done in the “colours of currency”.

Meanwhile, Ms Bewick is involved in a work in progress opera with Irish composer Raymond Deane.

The storyline and sets will be the work of Ms Bewick. The opera was inspired by a 19th century love affair between the wife of Gustav Mahler and a painter.

Between 1912 and 1914 Alma Mahler had an affair with the artist Oskar Kokoschka.

When she left him, he had a life-sized doll of her created.

The stuff of opera and psychoanalysis.