June 28, 2011
by Xydis When Hair & Art Collide

Our Colour Director Christine Rowe at Valonz collaborated with photographer Tim Richardson, Art Director Shane Sakkeus and myself on this shoot for Oyster Magazine. You can see the original artists work that inspired us all. I spoke with Christine on how she was able to interpret the brief

Ren xxx

Yves Klein - Blue Venus

When Tim contacted me about collaborating with him on this shoot, I was thrilled to be able to work with such a creative team of people and really push the perception of hair colour as we know it. We had the idea to reference abstract expressionist’s work who worked with bold colours that made a statement with shapes.

Francis Bacon - Crucify

During the project, I read about Artist Francis Bacon and the process and approach he used when painting. Something he said stayed in my mind which I wanted to use when creating this project; he said, he may walk into a painting with an idea for the canvas to go into a certain direction, but all of a sudden the paint is running the other way and he goes with it, not fight it. It doesn’t mean it is wrong, it’s just taking on a new journey and that’s the exciting thing about it.

Jackson Pollack - Untitled

The greatest challenge for me was how could I create these colours on hair? I liked the play of colours mixed together that created tones that you don’t normally see on hair.

Anish Kapoor - Drip

I loved the idea of crossing over mediums, brining acrylic paints and using Wella’s fantastic palette of colours; For example to create texture into the hair, however the logistics of the paints weight would then effect the style that Renya needed to create into a shape. Although the colour needed to be recreated, I needed to be really creative with my knowledge of the Wella range and then research on the techniques that the artists used played an enormous part of how I could get the colour right.

Marc Quinn - Kate Moss Sculpture 8

Photographer Tim Richardson Art Direction Shane Sakkeus Hair by Renya Xydis forThe Artist Group, Hair colour by Christine Rowe for Wella Make up Mark McCarthy for Valonz

Behind the scenes…