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STANDING ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
This image goes back to sources in Antiquity but is best known in the version from Sir Isaac Newton, the 17th-century scientist: "If we saw farther than others, it is because we stood on the shoulders of giants." I feel somewhat this way about being a painter after having first been an art historian. Sometimes it is a deterrent to contemplate the achievements of others, but sometimes their work serves as inspiration.
These paintings and prints were inspired by various artists, mostly Europeans who lived in the 19th century. My use of my sources is usually some aspect of composition, degree of three-dimensionality, lighting or palette.
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Matisse's Cat: Leaving Still Life, 2000
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Matisse's Cat Leaving a Still Life
began as one of a pair of still life paintings from a set-up on a friend's kitchen table. At a crucial point in my process, one of her four orange tomcats jumped across the kitchen, inspiring a change in the background of the larger painting. The title refers to the flatness and patterning of its style (as far as I know, Matisse had no cat). L'Arlesienne's Bouquet,
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L'Arlesienne's Bouquet, 2001
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whose literal source was a bouquet of winter white flowers, got its name from the flat, floral-patterned backgrounds of Vincent Van Gogh's several portraits of Madame Roulin rocking a cradle (La Berceuse).
Compositions of Edgar Degas have been quite deliberate inspirations for a number of paintings and prints. Like him, I enjoy random groupings of horses and other beings in motion. Eleven Headed Uphill: Opening Day, Smithtown Hunt
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Eleven Headed Uphill: Opening Day, Smithtown Hunt, 2012
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is a distant descendant of Degas's many paintings and pastels of jockeys and horses,
though Homage to Degas: Chelsea Dogs -- a trio of New Yorkers waiting for their dog walker -- owes more to his images of dancers at rest.
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| | Homage to Degas: Chelsea Dogs, 2011 |
Goya has given me some surprising inspirations, some from painting and some from prints. White Peonies: Homage to Goya owes its flashbulb-like lighting to some of Goya's early portraits of Spanish aristocrats seen full-face,
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| | White Peonies: Homage to Goya, 2009 |
while the series of Spanish kittens, seen here in the two impressions of my most recent monotype and a painted version, owe much to the portrait of Don Manuel Osorio de Zuniga in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He is a small boy in a red suit holding a string with a magpie attached, while watchful cats lurk in the background. Goya's many etchings depicting bad human behavior -- I'm thinking primarily of the Disasters of War and the Caprichos -- have also percolated through to the composition of those feral kittens.
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| | Homage to Goya: Spanish Kittens 1/2, 2015 |
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| | Homage to Goya: Spanish Kittens 2/2, 2015 |
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| | Homage to Goya: Spanish Kittens, 2015 |
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But it's summer, and sometimes my commentaries have been a bit more obvious. These two collaged portraits with Frida Kahlo's eyebrow date from the mid-1990s,
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| | Self-Portrait with Frida Kahlo's Eyebrow, 1995 |
when I had fun with stage makeup and our old technology, the camera on a tripod. Just as we can't help wondering how much the ancient
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| | Self-Portrait with Frida Kahlo's Eyebrow, 1995 |
Romans would have loved plastic, I wonder what Frida would have done with a smart phone and a selfie stick....
NEW WORK
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American Pharaoh 1/2, monotype, 5" x 6 3/4," 2015
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American Pharaoh 2/2, monotype,
5" x 6 3/4," 2015
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Five Roses in a Vase placed in front of another painting of mine, Gravel Path and Allee of Roses; the overview with paints and tools, and the finished painting, Five Roses, Blue Vase.
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| Bouquet of Roses in A Blue Vase
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| | Five Roses in a Blue Vase |
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