 |
|||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|||||||
Vernissage: Freitag, 17. Oktober 2008, 20 Uhr
Previous Images
PAINTINGS OF THE ACTRESS
SANDRA KNIGHT
BY
THE ARTIST
SANDRA KNIGHT NICHOLSON STEPHENSON
Dauer der Ausstellung 17.10. - 30.10.2008
www.sandraknight.com/
Anlässlich ihres Berliner Besuches findet nun im Kino Babylon eine Werkschau statt. Gezeigt werden sowohl verschiedene Filme aus dem Umfeld Roger Cormans (The Terror, Frankenstein's Daughter) als auch ihr Debüt als Schauspieler neben Robert Mitchum in Thunder Road. Eröffnet wird die Retrospektive am 14. Oktober, das Gespräch anschließend moderiert Jörg Buttgereit.
Programm >>>
Kino Babylon Berlin >>>
 |
 |
 |
|
The Tower Of London
Mistress Shore - Premonition Sandra Knight Nicholson Stephenson |
The Tower Of London
Mistress Shore - I Will Not Lie Sandra Knight Nicholson Stephenson |
The Tower Of London Mistress Shore - Dark Night Of The Soul Sandra Knight Nicholson Stephenson |
PREVIOUS IMAGES
I established a painting salon at my home in Hollywood while I was married to Jack Nicholson and I had actor friends over to pose and other friends to paint with me.
I started painting this project in the garage and became fascinated by the idea of the persona. I started with a close up from the movie, “The Terror,” in which I stared with my husband at the time, Jack Nicholson. This movie was one that we did because Roger Codman called us, Jack and I had just been married about one year and we needed the work. I was working as an actress in Television mostly and Jack was developing projects and acting, but it wasn’t as if we were rolling in money.
So when Roger called and asked me if I wanted to do a movie with my husband, I said sure. What’s the movie about? When do we start? Roger said he didn’t know what the movie was about but we would start shooting next week because he had some sets left over from another movie that he had just finished and he wanted to use those same sets. He also had Boris Karloff who would be in town for another week and he had consented to doing another movie with Roger if it could happen right away. Jack and I laughed about the fact that maybe Roger was becoming a little more like Felinni, who usually didn’t have a script either.
 |
|
The Terror
Helene - Do I know you? Sandra Knight Nicholson Stephenson |
A few months later, when Roger needed more shots, Jack and I went to Big Sur California to shoot remaining scenes, where a young director would direct the exteriors and the rest of the movie for Roger. That young director, who didn’t get credit for directing because he wasn’t a member of the Directors guild, was Francis Ford Coppola. We all ended up staying in Big Sur at what is now called the Esalen Institute.
"Previous Images" is about the various personas I inhabited as an actress, artist, and a person. I have drawn my paintings from movies in which I starred with legendary film giants such as: Robert Mitchum in “Thunder Road,” Jack Nicholson and Boris Karloff in “The Terror,” directed by Roger Corman and Francis Ford Coppola, Vincent Price in “The Tower of London,” and “Frankenstein’s Daughter.”
The persona, the mask, is that face we present to the outer world, which masks our true self. It is all about the image that we "are not," even if it is from the past. I paint the characters I played, so it is a three-way dialogue between the painter, the actress, and the character.
In antiquity, the persona was the mask worn by an actor. To quote Carl Jung:
“The persona…is the individual’s system of adaptation to, or the manner he assumes in dealing with, the world. Every calling or profession, for example, has its own characteristic persona. … the danger is that (people) become identical with their personas – the professor with his textbook, the tenor with his voice. One could say, with little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.”
When I paint I become a camera focusing with close-ups, long shots, medium shots on the canvas, which has replaced the movie screen. I am as much director as painter. My paintings are stills from a narrative that others have created. Yet from these stills, like lobby posters, the drama of the image entices the viewer to want to see more.
The paintings are memory portraits of the characters I have played. Many of these characters – as well as the films – have become cult classics. A three-way dialogue emerges between artist, actress, and the character in the film. The time line collapses, past and present merge.
The characters are archetypes, but they are also women I once inhabited. I once entered their persona like Cocteau’s Orpheus stepping through the mirror. Once again, moving inside the character as the painter, I try to recapture not only who they were, but also those mysterious facets of the character that still live within me.
Many of the images hint at the torment, longing and identity crisis I faced when the films were made. Hopefully the audience viewing these images will better understand the complexity, the humor, the anguish, and also the innocence of being in that filmmaking era.
I’m not interested in ugly images. I’m interested in finding beauty and the invisible soul that might exist simultaneously in the characters and the actress. I’m interested in the soul as a living reality that needs to be acknowledged not only from the character’s point of view, but from the actress’ and ultimately the painter’s point of view as well. Then it can become an experience the viewer can share on many levels. I try to capture beauty within the characters, even within their fabricated images. Film creates things that do not exist and I was part of that fantasy. Now I paint characters that inhabited me, or that I, in a dream like state inhabited, so that a new audience can share, and perhaps question, the nature of who they are.
The horror films that are the subject of my paintings are not at all frightening to today’s audiences – in fact they are rather humorous. My paintings reflect that humor, but they are also serious in the same way we were serious about making the films. The terror and fear the movies created reflected the fears of society – not necessarily the bogie man in the closet or under the bed, but the bogie man of terrorists and death itself. We are entertained and distracted by two hours of negative images in a darkened theater, and perhaps that helps us deal with the negativity in the world. But in the movies it is all illusion; when the filming is over the actors take off their makeup and go home. Perhaps the terror in the world is equally illusory, but we have yet to figure out how to take off our makeup and go home.
 |
|
Frankenstein’s Daughter
Trudy - Awakening From a Bad Dream Sandra Knight Nicholson Stephenson |
I’m always looking for something in the character that tells me she wants to do more, feel more, or escape from where she is in her perception of reality. I like to capture the longing inherent in the human psyche for peace and harmony. I paint the mask, the persona, and the mask transforms itself into other images from other times and places. These other beings I once inhabited, with their other moods and other perspectives taking form, but the “see-er,” remains. What I have seen and felt, things from other cultures and the imagination of the screenwriters, has broadened my understanding, but have they altered the reality of who I am? The images in most of the paintings peer out and look at the viewer demanding recognition. Perhaps the viewer might wonder if we have met before in other times, other places.
For this exhibition at Gallery Zero I have fifteen paintings completed this year and ten that come from previous exhibitions in Honolulu and Los Angeles. Also in the exhibition is an eight-minute DVD made for me by filmmaker Christopher Hermann of New York where my paintings are married with the relevant scenes from my movies.
“Many Contemporary artists have been inspired by film imagery, David Salle being a prime example. In the television age, the image on the screen becomes in many ways more present than the actual person. Artists like Cindy Sherman have transformed themselves into film noir images. Sherman becomes a stand-in for every American archetype from the housewife, to Kim Novak, to the nurse. Sandra Stephenson’s work takes on another layer of complexity. Her work forms a dialogue between herself as the artist, herself as the actress, and the film character. This triangular role makes her unique. Her portraits become a dialogue between the three, artist, actress and character”.
Ann McCoy, New York September 8, 2003
CURRICULUM VITAE
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, brought up in Los Angeles from early childhood, Sandra Knight, (maiden and professional name) performed as a child – singing, dancing, acting and modeling. She had one of her first “gigs” performing as the lead singer in her group, called, the “String Busters” playing Ukulele, with her back up on guitar and steel guitar when she was 9 years old. After high school she continued to perform while attending Santa Monica City College in the now famous, “Children’s Theater.” This was the first of its kind in Los Angeles to tour schools and give to the community of its local City College talent.
During a talent show Sandra was spotted while singing “The Last Time I Saw Paris”, by an agent from Hollywood. Sandra was immediately signed and within a few months was starring at a Hollywood Theater in the lead role of the comedy, “The Moon is Blue.” From that play she was spotted again by a casting agent who suggested her for the leading role opposite Robert Mitchum in his independent film production of “Thunder Road.” She won the part in a major talent search after Mitchum had interviewed over 300 young women. From that role Mitchum and 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Columbia Studios offered Sandra contracts.
It was while working at MGM Studios that she met and married Jack Nicholson. They were married for 8 years, had a child Jennifer, and were divorced.
She went on to star in 5 feature films, and over 35 featured and starring roles in Television. She studied acting during her career, with Marty Landau and Jeff Corey. She starred with such actors as, Vincent Price, Robert Mitchum, Rod Cameron, Boris Karloff, Dale Robertson, Bette Davis, and Jack Nicholson. She had the privilege of working with such renowned directors as, Richard Donner, Francis Ford Coppola, Arthur Ripley, Tay Garnet, Roger Corman and Irvin Kershner.
While pursuing her career as an actor she also kept busy at UCLA, LACC and Otis Art Institute, studying philosophy, painting, and writing. She continued her pursuit of painting for eight years by studying privately with the well-known American Impressionist painter Helen Winslow.
In the 80’s she wrote her first screenplay, “King City”, with her husband John Stephenson, and formed a production company, “Synergy Production.” She went on to write other screenplays, “Loving on the Wrong Side of the Brain”, “The Contest”, “A Question Of Balance”, and “The Listening Lady.” She also wrote many children’s stories, “The Coconut Tree”, and “The secret of the Rain Forest”, and the play, “Pagoda Hangout.”
EXHIBITIONS:
• 2005 PREVIOUS IMAGE
o Edgemar Center for the Arts, Santa Monica, California
• 2003 PREVIOUS IMAGE
o Studio One, Honolulu, Hawaii – in conjunction with the Cinema Paradise Film Festival
FILM - ACTRESS
• INEVITABLE GRACE (1994)
• THE HAUNTING OF MORELLA (1990)
• BLOOD BATH (1966)
• THE TERROR (1963)
• TOWER OF LONDON (1962)
• THE TERROR AT BLACK FALLS (1962)
• FRANKENSTEIN’S DAUGHTER (1958)
• THUNDER ROAD (1958)
TELEVISION – ACTRESS
• SURFSIDE 6 – Separate Checks – Drama (1962)
• I’M DICKENS, HE’S FENSTER – The Yellow Badge of Courage - Comedy 1962)
• TERROR AT BLACK FALLS – Western (1962)
• THE TALL MAN – A Time to Run – Western (1962)
• LARAMIE –
• The Last Journey – Western (1961)
• Drifter’s Gold – Western (1960)
• THE REBEL –
• The Actress – Western (1961)
• The Death of Gray – Western (1960)
• TATE – Home Town – Western (1960)
• THE MAN FROM BLACKHAWK – The Search for Cope Borden – Western (1960)
• BURBON STREET BEAT – Knock on Any Tombstone – Drama (1960)
• TALES OF WELLS FARGO – The Legacy – Western (1959)
• ALCOA PRESENTS: ONE STEP BEYOND – The Burning Girl – Thriller (1959)
• STATE TROOPER – 710 Hysteria Street – Drama (1958)
| home |