wobble, 38x30” oil on linen, as she looked following an extensive rework today
BELOW: wobble as she looked on december 19 and, on the right, as she looks following the rework today
2:58 PM: i last worked on wobble, 38x30” exactly a month ago, on december 19, 2024. at that time i considered it a completed painting. but not so fast, tarlow! after a week or more of studio cleanup/reorg, so that all my oil colors and brushes are organized in a way they never were before, and are so easily accessable, it was a very different experience when i started painting over large portions of this painting which, we both agreed, had far to much going on, with a number of figures that were not needed.
i daresay, it’s now a greatly improved composition!i which, yet again, illustrates how painting is a process, and you must hang in there until the process is complete, which may take days, weeks, months, years.
in the 1960’s i created a relationship with the renowned karagiozis performer, sotiris spatharis. one day, he invited me to his workshop, where he made the figures he would be using in his shadow theatre performances. he showed me, in his characteristic humble fashion, figures he’d been working on, and proceeded to continue work on his latest figure. these are 2 of the photos i shot that day.
we regularly took our son dimitri to attend these performances, which had a profound effect on his development in theatre. he became a director/producer with his own theatre, POREIA, well known to athenians for it’s excellent performances.
here’s a facebook link to his site: https://www.facebook.com/poreiatheatre
from the World Encyclopedia of Puppetry Arts:
Greek shadow puppeteer, one of the masters of the karaghiozis (Modern Greek: Καραγκιόζης) form of puppetery. Sotiris Spatharis started his career in 1909 by putting up shows using his own figures and plays that he had himself created. He travelled the country accompanied by a singer. He was the first shadow showman to use advertising placards, which he himself painted, to announce his shows; and the first to distinguish himself with epilogues, called “apotheoses with the whole body”, played by the puppeteer and his assistant facing the stage at the end of his repertory of “heroic” plays.
at work on "Gaze 36," 11/27/2016
