New Work, New Thoughts

Partly because summer is a busy, miserably hot season in North Alabama, partly because I thought "taking it easy" for a little while might be beneficial, among other things, I had not completed any new paintings for almost a month until today. I deliberately took even more time than needed to complete the painting I now call "Nik in Italy" [below] and signed once as usual, then again in Latin [above]. However, now that it is finished, I have already begun working simultaneously on two new paintings.
An up-close inspection of this large portrait reveals that only the face is completely smooth and free of traces of my hand, the rest of the painting looks fairly figurative from a distance but still slightly abstract in much of its brushwork. I wanted to blend what I knew of Venetian paintings with something of my usual style, and have been musing to myself that the end result comes across as a bit of a "painting of a painting". Nik, the subject of the portrait and a subject very dear to me, is rather Italian in heritage, looks, (diet), and manner, yet was born and raised in the United States. To my mind, the work is both a statement about his own cultural ties, artistic sensibilities, and love of the Italian landscape, as well as a re-envisioning of his appearance, environment, and place in time-- a bit of imaginative fancy that nevertheless reveals a concrete truth about its subject.

In addition to renewing my interest in painting portraits, this painting has left me thinking even more about how I can continue to incorporate historically popular techniques into new and original work. . .

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Painting Venetian Style

I have been thinking about the "Old Masters" quite a bit lately. Perhaps because I enjoy practicing my stylistic flexibility, or perhaps simply because I am fascinated by the history of artistic styles and techniques, I have embarked upon a large portrait-- some of you may recognize the eye in the "sneak peek" photo above-- in a somewhat improvised classical Venetian style. While I am not using a chalk and glue ground, I am using raw umber as a base, applied to the canvas with a knife, and working with runny paint, varnish, and plenty of linseed oil to create the proper finish, transparency, and luminosity. While I do not intend to directly copy the style of The Masters, I do wish to capture something of their aura, without irony or surreal post-modern twists at that.

Thinking that Caravaggio's work was considered by some to be the downfall of true art, that Velazquez repeatedly wiped his brush directly onto the canvas to get rid of excess paint and then painted over the mess, that El Greco did not build up layers of varnish the way his contemporaries would have preferred, as well as many other small semi-forgotten facts makes me imagine traveling to their studios, getting to know their different sets of tools, their personalities, their goals. Perhaps this is as close to communing with these men as one can ever get.

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