OLIO - Proverb Initial Research/Thoughts - 20/10/2016

“God sends food, and the devil sends cooks

Thomas Deloney. Quoted from “A. Borde Dietary of Health XI” (1542)

From the proverb I was given I noted down the key words I believe are important for ideas and visual imagery. “God” and “Devil” associates with religion, which would suggests a conflict between good and evil. “Food” is probably the important keyword, as it could hold some symbolism. “Cooks” is most likely representing the humans’ destructive greed and destroying god’s gift (food). These are my initial thoughts of my proverb though this may change during the development of my ideas for the illustration.

“GOD sends meat, but the devil sends cooks. Bad cooks spoil the food God has provided.”

 “Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs”. Jennifer Speake. OUP Oxford, 24 Sep 2015 

A more simplified version to explain what the proverb actually means from the book “Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs”. The breakdown of the saying is rather straightforward and nothing too complex from what I had found. It appears the proverb is just a simple saying about consequences (?), though I’m not too certain as this is the only other information I can find on the saying.

The origin of the saying is from a scholarly article “A. Borde Dietary of Health XI” by Thomas Deloney about health and dietary. The issue of Health and diet can be an idea as a theme for my illustration, combining the ideas of symbolism with health and food.

After looking into the proverb in more detail I gathered all the key words that I think will be crucial to the design ideas for my illustration:

God

Devil

Food

Cooks

Religion

Symbolism

Health

Kitchen Appliances (metaphor for the cooks) Animals/Vegetables (metaphor for food)

Demons (metaphor for the cooks)Renaissance

From these words I will generate ideas that will show some connection with the themes, primarily with symbolism, food and the ‘good vs evil’ context as there are probably the strongest themes out of all to go forward with. In terms of research of these themes I will be looking into artworks and stories from the Renaissance, or other religious poems to see what kind of visual imagery I can create (in terms of composition and colour) for my given proverb.