Autumn Sonata

For the last several years as I have been bringing students to New York, one of the highlights has been visiting The Criterion Collection with my colleague illustrator Caitlin Kuhwald. Caitlin has been doing great work for them for years so I was very excited to get a call recently from Eric Skillman asking me if I could do the illustrations for the Criterion DVD/Bluray release of Autumn Sonata, a film by Ingmar Bergman, starring Liv Ullmann and Ingrid Bergman.  It was Ingrid Bergman's last performance in a major theatrical feature film. It tells the story of a self- absorbed  classical pianist who is confronted by her grown-up, neglected daughter. The film was  shot by the great Sven Nyqvist, making every frame a great still image in it's own right. My exciting but intimidating challenge was to make a painterly statement to help package the DVD, while remaining true to the spirit of the film's visual language.