Ash Smith Art: Romeo and Juliet

One of the pieces I've been working on this summer is a Romeo & Juliet themed large collage. The idea started from a photoshoot that I pulled out of Vogue a long time ago, its a shoot featuring ballerinas acting out the seminal moments of the Shakespearean drama while dressed in haute-off-the-runway couture. I'm pretty sure that renowned fashion photographer Annie Liebovitz shot it- the images are truly immaculate, the lighting, the colors, the rich textures. The images were very rich in color and romantic in detail, which lent a different mood, more mature and subdued than with other work. I looked for similar rich colors and textures in my additional source images to establish continuity. With the non-Vogue pictures I was drawn to some riffs on the traditional romantic motifs, like the images of Marilyn Monroe on the set of "Some Like It Hot", as well as some more traditional romantic imagery, like the Monarch butterfly wings and the gondola in Venice. During the making of this I indulged my Leonardo Dicaprio fascination by watching the equisite Baz Luhrman "Romeo and Juliet", and the excessive lushness of his visuals came through in my aesthetic. The tentative working title at this point is "Romeo & Juliet", but I'm open to something with a little more irony if anyone has suggestions.