Although I learned to play guitar all these years ago with the sole purpose of songwriting in mind, I first had to learn a few chords, and to do that, I studied the songs of others.
The syllabus in my college of musical knowledge was heavily weighted with the work of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, John Prine, and Lennon-McCartney. It follows that my artistic education should include some studies of the masters whose work I admire.
I’ve done a bit of that, off and on, but for my winter project, I plan to work on a series of studies of masterpieces, or at least pieces from masters. Back in the spring, I started working with watercolors creating sketches from my travels, and practically abandoned my studio practice. Then Inktober came around and I committed myself to that project for the month of October, so it’s only been a couple of weeks that I’ve been back in the studio pushing paint into canvas.
I’ve got a few faces lined up for my on-going IN YOUR FACE series (I just finished a few of those that I’ll debut as soon as the models get a peek). But I like to have a couple of things going at a time, so I just thought I would do some more travel images. But first, I wanted to do something fun to get myself back into studio habits. I had earlier done some watercolor studies of everybody’s favorite painting, Vincent’s “Starry Night”, and while I was working on those I got the urge to do an actual-size copy.
I remember when I first saw “Starry Night” live at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I was struck (among other things) by how large the painting is (29 by 36.25 inches). I’m not sure why I was surprised by that. Perhaps because the Cincinnati Art Museum’s Van Goghs aren’t as large or maybe because I was just so in awe seeing it for the first time.
In up-close scrutiny, I was also amazed at the confidence of Vincent’s brush, how the strokes were boldly visible, the paint so thick, seeming both meticulously planned and executed in a whirl. He didn’t work the pigment into the canvas, but just laid the paint down in big globs. MOMA has done a high resolution three dimensional scan of the painting that now lets us take an even closer look at Vincent’s technique.
Of course, I knew that I would not be able, would not even want to do a stroke-by-stroke recreation. I wanted to approach it as I would approach playing a cover song once I started playing guitar out in public. That is, I want anyone who knows the song to be able to recognize it, but I also want to put my own spin on it. I don’t have Vincent’s chops, but I can learn by trying to emulate what he did. I have no illusions of surpassing his effort, but merely to pay homage to it. Also, I’m not painting things to exhibit or sell. I have decided to paint for an audience of one: Me.
I didn’t have a prepared canvas big enough to do a life-size recreation, so I had to build a frame out of my stash of sticks and stretch my own. The closest I could get was 34 by 44 inches, so I created a frame within the frame. Storage of my finished paintings is becoming somewhat of an issue, so I plan to take it off the frame, punch in a couple of grommets in the unpainted area across the top and just hang it on a couple of nails.
Bruce Springsteen recently released an album of soul covers and Bob Dylan a couple of years ago did an album of jazz standards, so while I painted on my Starry Night, I got the idea to use it as a springboard for a series of “covers” as my winter project. I’m planning to stay close to the studio until my trip to England in April, so that would give me time to do ten or twelve paintings on a similar scale paying homage to the painters whose work I have admired. There may be another Van Gogh by the time it’s done, and I haven’t made any final decisions on what to tackle next, but some artists on my short list include Picasso, Edward Hopper, Salvador Dali, and to have some fun with paintings like “American Gothic” or “The Scream”.
Stay tuned