MULTI-PANELING
After painting with color lines for most of last year, I returned to the silhouette-based surfaces but stuck to the concept of multi-panels, I wasn't done with that idea yet.
If you think about it, a diptych (even on a single canvas) never had a center, or rather, it had two. Which led to a kind of intervention that had less to do with painting than with concept. A very interesting concept. And a problem that needed to be solved.
The Dream (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 120 x 140 cm, 2023).
COLORFIELD DIPTYCHS
After months of painting with colored lines instead of surfaces, as I usually did, I reached a point where I had said all I had to say.
When a series nears its end, there came a point where painting began to feel like repetition rather than invention.
So I returned to what I named my colorfield paintings.
There were two kinds of landscapes, one of nature and one of the body.
Nexus (diptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 100 x 200 cm, 2023).
THE VOID
Embracing The Void.
Painting a surface in one color (such as yellow) means not just one tone, but many...
Soon I developed the concept of multi-panels more and more, until finally I had one of the panels only in color without any subject.
Or rather, the narrative was in the other panel.
31 JAN 2023
On the one hand you had the banal, the normal, life as we know it. On the other side was the void. The combination of the two shaped our lives.
Embracing The Void (diptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 60 x 120 cm, 2023).
The black panel was invaded by drops of color from the left panel. After all, it was a void.
THE LAST PORTRAIT
My mother passed away on 29.03.2023.
She was 92.
R.I.P. Mama (diptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 40 x 60 cm, 2023).
MIRRORED NARRATIVE
Things are what they seem.
Another way to work with double panels was to paint the same subject twice, one representational and one abstract.
For example, if it were a portrait, then so would the second canvas, just an abstract (pixelated?) version of it. So you would need both panels to read the entire diptych.
I found that these diptychs work better the more distance between them.
Double Portrait of A. (diptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 40 x 60 cm, 2023).
Double Portrait of C. (diptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 40 x 60 cm, 2023).
Double Portrait of D. (diptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 40 x 60 cm, 2023).
SPLIT
Representation & Abstraction.
Working on two panels at the same time made it possible to represent the same reality in two completely different ways.
So the question was not so much what abstraction was, but what wasn't?
Next To The Red Pillar (diptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 60 x 120 cm, 2023).
Blooming End (diptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 80 x 160 cm, 2023).
DIVIDING AN IMAGE
Another way to create a diptych was to divide one image (say a portrait) into two halves, one side representative and the other abstract.
The Swimming Lesson (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 120 x 140 cm, 2023).
While I usually prefer large canvases, I've painted quite a few smaller ones over the last couple of years. The layout did not necessarily had to be vertical, it can also be horizontal.
The Purple Sweater (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 40 x 60 cm, 2023).
MARCH 4, 2023
Two months of painting diptychs...
CENSORSHIP OF THOUGHT
The Silence (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 120 x 120 cm, 2023).
At first glance, all these series seem to be about different forms of abstraction. And that's right.
The Red Dress (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 80 x 160 cm, 2023).
But essentially it is about censorship. The censorship of meaning, style and subject.
Portrait of N. (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 100 x 120 cm, 2023).
In short, the Censorship of thought.
March 25, 2023: Occasionally I painted in shades of gray. It was a slightly different way of looking at things.
March 28, 2023: In general I don't make preliminary sketches, neither on paper nor on canvas, but with a diptych you quickly get lost while painting and before you know it you have two panels that do not connect well.
And it doesn't have to be a girl that I portray, it can also easily be a boy. Same difference.
Boy (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 120 x 140 cm, 2023).
This is a series where one painting leads to another, starting with a queen and ending with a clown.
I won't show everything, but the meaning should be clear.
The odd one out in the portrait series is Selfie.
Selfie (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 50 x 60 cm, 2023).
The triptych Mask, Mickey & Mummy emerged from that series of portraits.
Mask (triptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 3x 50 x 60 cm, 2023).
THE FINAL CUT
Slices Of Life
In the last series Odalisque I crop an image with a canvas that is less than half wider than it is tall, leaving only a part of the subject visible.
It's another way to divide an image.
The Pavillion (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 100 x 200 cm, 2023).
The Warmest Season & Sundays (oil & glaze medium on canvas, each 80 x 160 cm, 2023).
The Bath (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 50 x 100 cm, 2023).
THE INTERIOR MIND
Series have a point where it ends. It's unpredictable and just something you realize the moment it happens, you can feel it while painting or see when the painting is done. A certain routine sets in, a sense of repetition, that things start to get a little too easy. Also it feels like work and that is never a good feeling.
The painting The Interior Mind was intended as the beginning of a new chapter in the double series. Now it seems to be the end point, for now.
The Interior Mind (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 160 x 200 cm, 2023).
THESE STREETS
The series These Streets are a different kind of intervention. This time I cut not the image, but the story by taking a scene from reality and reimagining it.
Like in the painting The Nativity, where a pregnant couple lived rough on the streets (near Hollywood Avenue) and interpreted them as a kind of nativity scene.
No home, no future.
The Nativity (diptych, oil & glaze medium on canvas, 2x 80 x 180 cm, 2023).
All of these paintings are based on excerpts from news(paper) clippings, chosen at random.
Just things that caught my eye for some reason.
Holy Shit! (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 160 x 180 cm, 2023).
Protest! (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 80 x 180 cm, 2023).
Spoils Of War - Ukraine, 2023. (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 160 x 200 cm, 2023).
And to finish this series:
Water! and Food! (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 60 x 90 cm, 2023).
TRANSPARENCY
This is the first step in a new approach. It's still about the silhouette, the surface and the color. But I gave myself more freedom, or in my case a free hand. I trusted my instincts as well as my experience in painting.
At The Beginning (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 80 x 100 cm, 2023).
Blue Nude (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 100 x 120 cm, 2023).
Transparency will be an important part of this process.
Wildflower, The Perfume (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 80 x 100 cm, 2023).
The Longing Of Saint Barbara (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 175 x 200 cm, 2023).
Using transparent layers also makes for a very interesting way to create colors (rather than pre-mixing them).
Into The Fire, The Room (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 80 x 100 cm, 2023).
Those Perfect Days (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 120 x 140 cm, 2023).
Using transparent layers also makes for a very interesting way to create colors (rather than pre-mixing them).
The Storm (oil & glaze medium on canvas, 80 x 100 cm, 2023).
There is something else that makes transparent layers of paint interesting. You can first make a completely different underpainting. The new layer above it can then change or supplement that story, making it more extensive and exciting.
In short, it deepens the story.
To be continued...