7:35 PM: we took a walk up north crestone creek trail this afternoon on a spectacular day, with temperatures in the high '50'sF.
acropolis museum I, 68x56" oil on linen
a year ago, my ano kato show opened at gremillion & co. fine art in houston, texas. ano kato means upside down in modern greek, and all the paintings are inspired by photos i've taken over the years from above looking down. some at MOMA; in the acropolis museum in athens; at a sidewalk art festival in denver....
2:43 PM: we were at school this morning, where we introduced the kids to a project idea which allows them to take initiative in applying for grant money to develop a local project they design and plan. shot some good video, which of course now needs to be edited. before starting that editing, i'm focused on getting started on gaze 35, which i'd like to do tomorrow first thing.
here you see one of the core belief documents of the teacher we're working with posted on the wall. i thought it was admirable, which is why i've included it in today's post.
BELOW: a year ago today was the reception for my ANO KATO exhibition opening at gremillion & co. fine arts. the paintings are all in oil on linen, and all drawn from photographs i've shot over the years, all from above looking down.
4:50 PM: more editing today. i made good progress, completing the clip of the middle school kids collaborating, that mikela needs for a presentation she's putting together. i have a bit more to do tomorrow & then i should be able to get back to the gaze series. i thought it was complete, but my gut tells me otherwise.
if there was ever a day to skip painting, today was it. dark & rainy, it was the perfect day for editing & because of the poor quality of light, i didn't feel deprived. as i left the studio, a patch of blue sky appeared, quicly replaced by warm blue bleack pink clouds bearing rain and, above 12,000 ft., snow. tomorrow will be clear.
6:06 PM: for the second day in a row, i worked on editing video footage i shot on our last trip to the school in edwards. the subject of these clips was collaboration. these middle school kids are modeling collaborative problem solving, sometimes setting a stunning example for us. they'll be used in presentations we'll be giving on our educational startup, actionlab360. i still have some editing to do, as well as having to complete the applications for citizenship for our 2 grandkids in greece. they'll be meeting us when their dad, my son dimitris, brings them to NYC in late spring, where we'll be having our interview at the bureau of immigration.
here's my facebook post today:
T.S. Eliot at Harvard. I was given this original 1943 edition of Eliot's Four Quartets by my step mom Mary Tarlow. It's always on my night table, next to Moby Dick.
11:22 AM: i may have spoken too soon. today as i looked at most of the series hanging in our house, i began feeling differently about this series being complete. gotta run now; more about this later...
this 1978 potrait of my dear friend, greek painter the late yorgos manousakis will give you a sense of just how much the gaze is in my DNA. it was painted from life in egg tempera on board.
12:23 PM: i'm feeling complete with my gaze series of paintings. i'm uncertain where i'll be going next, but i've been increasingly anxious to return to oil paint, and this may be the time for that. first i'lll make some drawings, which i may start tomorrow, and then, once i've found my bearings, transition to oil on linen. i may, weather permitting, venture out to the creek for some of these preliminary drawings. this afternoon on our walk i may even take a sketch book with me & see what happens.
here's what it looks like out one of my north facing studio windows, and a random shot of the area beneath that, which inevitably reveals a piece of my reality here in the studio...
1:43 PM: last night our dear friend tamar came over for a visit. she has a very refined eye; she spent her early years in italy restoring great masterpieces of the italian renaissance, and sees things most would miss. her feedback on glaze 34, which i brought over to the house, was spot on. i mean, spot on!
so earlier today i brought gaze 34 back to the studio and commenced gently re-working the sections she had pointed out might need work.
to fully appreciate what's going on here, it will be helpful to review my 10/30 post on the aesthetic of the worn & torn.
BELOW: the chronological stages of gaze 34, starting today on the upper left, and going back to the initial drawing, october 3, on the lower left. if you click on that drawing, making it full screen, and then keep clicking on the left arrow, you'll have a sense of the stages this painting went through before reaching it's current resolved state.
with gaze 34, 38x38" at about 2:30 pm
2:38 PM: we have a guestt coming this afternoon, and today is our day to walk the trail, so rather than go at 3pm, we decided to leave at 10 am. normally, this would have cut into my painting time significantly, but i knew that the energy of the trail would create a more productive work day, albeit a shorter one. and i was right.
i launched into setting out my colors and painting faster than usual, and had a very productive 2 hour session. gaze 34 is skating the edge of verisimilitude. by that i mean the degree to which it's true to the source: a 1st c. fayum portrait of a woman with a golden crown of leaves. by the edge, i mean that tendency i speak of so often to want to make what i'm painting look like whatever it is i'm looking at, as much as possible. usually, this is to the detriment of the picture plane. when that happens, i scrumble and paint over what i've done, using the traces of that under-painting to enrich the next layer. that process continues until the picture plane triumphs.
yesterday i spoke of the aesthetic of the worn and the torn, as a way of giving you a sense of where i'm at; the direction the gaze series seems to be taking. the worn & torn aesthetic is a phrase i made up to convey the extreme aesthetic pleasure i get from viewing time worn paintings, mosaics....even contemporary billboards. we saw one some years ago while waiting for the Metro in Paris, and it was simply magnificent, with layers of older billboard images peeking through the torn bits. you could have taken it and installed it in a museum as is.
while i am capable of making good "abstract" paintings, my forte has always been "realism." i put the two in quotes because, as i've said before, i don't really buy that distinction, which of course is very a convenient one for critics and art historians. but that's a longer conversation.
the gaze series paintings need, i believe to be shown together in the same space. i've been researching european galleries, because i feel that's where they would be most appreciated and understood. as soon as something pans out, you'll be the first to know.
2:07 PM: this is gaze 34 at the end of my painting day. the torn areas have been pushed back, so that they don't pop quite so much. the black-blue dark areas at the bottom of the painting have been modified, pretty much for the same reason. am i creating an ancient artifact or a contemporary painting? of course it's impossible to create an ancient artifact; what continues to interest me passionately is the integrity of the picture plane combined with mystery filled content.
to be continued tomorrow,,,
drinking my morning fresh ginger/tumeric root tea
12:32 PM: as i resumed work on gaze 34, which was far too fragmented and hard-edged, i inched closer to my long standing attraction to torn & faded posters, age damaged pompeian frescos & fayum portraits, and so on.
many of us have been conditioned to see the beauty in these phenomena. one could argue that there's an aesthetic here. the aesthetic of the worn & torn.
in this specific instance, the torn aspect emerged quite naturally: as i looked at the painting in a strong cross-light, i spotted little ripples in the collaged paper, where it hadn't adhered properly. so i grabbed an edge & pulled, as one would a scab. the worn came about as a result of extensive scrumbling (a word i made up, referring to my process of going over the painting with a light wash of color, then dragging a scraper over it this way & that, and working into that with my bubble wrap technique).
in the end, it must sing. it's close, but not yet.
3:28 PM: bleary eyed and happy, i end my painting day. while it is, as yet, unresolved as a painting, the image has re-emerged from the maze of collaged elements i attached this morning with a fresh vibrancy.
unplanned, unexpected shapes have appeared, and this is one of the aspects i love most about the kind of collaging i've developed. it provides a new, present time context for this 1st century visage, with her soulful gaze. i can't emphasize enough how many strands of my life as a painter are coming into play in this series. and i've finally begun to accept the fact that, like it or not, i am stubbornly attached to form & literal meaning in a way that feels almost like an addiction.
so every morning when i enter my studio, i come face to face with that habit. thank god i delight in breaking it, in roughly the same way i delighted in breaking the rules in grade school. an artist whose work has become predictable is boring. the history of art is littered with them.
onwards! to be continued tomorrow morning, hopefully a tad earlier!
2:12 PM: the newly collaged elements have practically obliterated the image. the resulting new colors: a bold blue and pink, have suddenly changed the game. now i think i'll go back in with my brushes and see where it takes me.
11:15 am: bit of a late start today. i'm thinking i may do some collaging on gaze 34 before resuming work with my fan brushes. BELOW: a detail of gaze 34 with a pic of a very early stage of the painting on oct. 8th:
