"Tintoretto and Jasper Johns ?"
Tintoretto Jasper Johns
As I get older as a painter, I find myself less caught up in technical issues, and my thoughts going more towards thinking about what it is I'm trying to express. When I was a young artist starting out I was in love with the paintings of Jasper Johns. I didn't really get all of the concept that was supposed to go along with the work, I just responded to the lush brushwork and the daring use of color. I had this feeling that Johns was a reluctant dauber. In other words, I believed that even though he was an artist working in a modern style, he really had the soul of a Pisarro or Monet, and the brushwork and drawing skills to match. Some realist painters lament the fact that realist art was displaced by modern art. I have to admit that I've felt that way on occasion, but as I relax my white knuckle grip on technique, I'm starting to find that some of the ideas that I explored and was excited by as a young artist are starting to creep their way back in. Not that I've mastered technique. How boring painting would be if that were true.
"Obscura" 16"x20" oil on panel
In my recent painting "Obscura", I found myself thinking of both Jasper Johns and Tintoretto. I've always loved how Tintoretto places a life size or viewers scale figure in the foreground. It has the effect of inviting me in to the space of the painting. It's as if Tintoretto's saying " come on in, the waters fine". I'm viewing a figure that's viewing a scene in the painting. How awesome is that? This is an idea that Johns has also played with over the years in his work. How does the artist relate to this thing that they're making? In "Obscura" I wanted the camera to work in much the same way that one of Tintoretto's figures does. One of the things that I often think about is how our concept of reality has been shaped by the invention of photography. I wonder if people who lived before the mass dissemination of the photographic image, perceived the world differently? The camera represents the viewer entering the space of the painting and seeing it with modern eyes.
At the same time as I'm depicting the arrangement of objects that I see before me, I also want to exert my own inner vision on the scene. I want to see if I can get these two realities to exist harmoniously in a painting. The fracture of my brushstrokes in certain parts of the painting is something that I can remember exploring quite a bit in my younger days and that I now find myself drawn to exploring once again. The carved out zig-zag marks and punctures originally started out as an attempt to add an old and worn out looking patina to the surfaces in the paintings, inspired by the Dutch masters, but they've begun to take on a life of their own. It's as if there's a chaotic element lurking just below the surface, and it's all I can do to keep the image from coming apart. I've always been something of a designer. I can remember being drawn to the work of the early Russian "Constructivists". I felt that they had taken Picasso's Cubism, a kind of rough and tumble assault on Classical ideals, and fashioned it into something streamlined and beautiful. I have to watch that I don't allow an idea to become overly decorative. It's a fine line to walk, but it is possible. Johns is a good example. He uses stencils, patterning, and repetition, but I never thought to myself, when viewing one of his paintings, "hmm, this would make a good wallpaper design!"
