ARTIST STATEMENT:
I painted Looking Like The Girl With a Pearl Earring in tribute to Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring. It’s one of a series of paintings titled After Greatness in which I playfully replace the faces of famous portraits with my own face and make other illustrative additions and comments.
I tried to match the original in color, clothing and pose. The first departure from the original was to replace the European girl’s face with my middle-aged Asian face. I kept the earring since it connects the old story to the new one.
But I added a dragon hairpins to the side of the turban, and two blue stones to the front, just like my grandmother used to. I then added two paint brushes as hairpins through the top of her turban. This was my personal claim to the portrait as a painter. I then added rain and a storm into the dark background.
If you feel that Vermeer has the power to fire our creative imaginations after 500 years, you are right.