Painting

I wanted to be a master painter when I was growing up, the next Rubens or Sargent. I put a lot of time (with mixed results) into drawing and painting, and have remained fascinated with painted portrayals of the human form. The fleshy drama of Rubens, the quirky smirk of Sargent. Whether it was the palpable pain and struggle of the Lord’s crucifixion, or the scandal of the beautiful and indifferent Madame X, there was depth and reality to the figures they portrayed.

I managed, at my best, to become quite handy with a landscape, a still life, and, in one notable case, a duck. People always eluded me. A few years ago, determined to round out the gap in my subject matter, I decided to take a long hard look at Ruben’s style, sure that I would find some secret trick that allowed lifeless paint on board to become coiled muscle or sensual relaxation. What I found was a multi-layered technique that I am, frankly, still unable to execute.

The technique starts with a meticulously prepared board. More effort goes into the board than most artwork itself; sanding, priming, sanding, until a perfectly smooth finish is achieved. This preparation seems maddening and tedious to most people, though it is indispensible to the outcome.

A drawing of the subject is done, with particular attention being paid to the areas of light and dark. This drawing is then transferred to the prepared surface, and something like painting can begin. I say “like” because the first layer, in fact, the first few layers, look only a little like a painting. These initial layers are, in fact, like overlaid slices of film. Each layer, a very thin wash of paint, adds a tiny amount of the base color, building up shadows on the form being portrayed.

The thin paint allows the layers to show through one another, so that the viewer experiences this tiny depth of paint as great depth in viewing. The final layers of paint add details, and the object moves from the generic (an apple), to the specific (an apple with a dimple on the left and a flaw in the skin on the bottom right).

There is truth in art, if sometimes more in the technique than the vision. The base of our existence is indeed meticulously prepared, and onto it was transferred a sketch, a vision of our fullness. Over that sketch, we layer religion, country, family, profession, with depth building upon depth, until a perception of a three dimensional form emerges. That form roughly describes a person, and when we finally observe the details of the last layer, we see a vision that brings us close to understanding the individual in their fullness.

There is one final truth in painting, however: the painted apple, no matter how detailed, is still not an apple. No human artist’s layered vision can produce the object itself, and what we see is still only a likeness of that which was sketched.