The sun and the moon

Posted on March 17, 2009 by pearce

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Here’s the fruit of the work today, a night sky with the beginning of a sun and moon, and a couple of weird looking symbols that simply stand for “salt” and “sulphur”. A practicing alchemist seeks to purify the alchemical salt and sulphur, using mercury as the liquid agent within which to combine the two. Effortless Temperance here flawlessly mixes the two elements together, while the sun and moon appear behind her.

The position of her hands suggests the relationship of heaven to earth, and that we should be chastened to avoid excess. As an angel she is God’s messenger, so it’s probably smart to pay attention to her.

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Mr. blue sky

Posted on March 16, 2009 by pearce

img_8856If you want to make a really brilliant blue, red or yellow field in a painting one of the best ways to do it is to paint the area you’re looking at white, then put a coat of transparent paint over it. I love the rich dark blue – black that Prussian blue gives me, and the deliciously rich hues of French Ultramarine, but the only way to really get the full range of values from these lovely transparent blues is to put them over a white.

Ultramarine blue will give you a fantastic black if you lay it over a dark brown, too, but it’s different to the Prussian in that the latter has a density to it that will allow you to fade from super dark to a much lighter blue without putting that fade into the lower layer; the Prussian simply doesn’t have the same rich blueness as the Ultramarine though.

So here’s Temperance with a white sky painted in below her wings, getting ready for the Prussian blue layer to bring night-time back to the sky. I already like the dimension this simple skyline has brought to the image, so I’m looking forward to getting the sky back to midnight.

Murray and Megan McMillan and I went out to dinner – what a pleasure to spend the evening with these two smart and gentle people – they’re completely lovely. Can’t wait to see what they will do in the gallery, but there’s a flavor of what they’re up to on their blog if you’d like to get a sneak peak…

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Posted on March 15, 2009 by pearce

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You’ll see that the handle of Justice’s sword has been wrapped in a twisted leather, binding it so that Justice can keep her grip on the sword she will need to bring truth as alchemical fire to the dilemmas she must resolve. She stands on the solid gold of the monad, while around her the ice of our culture is thick, but broken up, simultaneously implying strength and fragility.

I’m thinking through what actions remain to complete these two paintings. I’d like to see more work on the hands to soften the flesh and make them gentler, and I think it wouldn’t hurt to do some more work to the background of Temperance so that there is a night-time landscape behind her with stars in the sky. The full moon a few nights ago really shook me – it was so luminous, but appearing and hiding behind high clouds – I want to paint a night sky very much. Perfect for the eponymous Moon card, which is a tricky composition requiring crayfish, towers and wolves. I feel a trip to the zoo coming on!

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Just ice

Posted on March 13, 2009 by pearce

img_8854I’ve been very preoccupied with getting things ready for Megan and Murray, who are coming to the gallery tonight, starting work on their installation for the university. After making sure that they had a place to stay I continued working on Justice, making some progress on an broken icy landscape that stretches away into the distance. This is a good first layer, that will get more refined with a few more glaze coats to add some gentle variation to the surface of the ice.

Justice and Temperance are almost complete. Only twenty more to do!

This evening I’m going to attend an opening reception at the High Gallery in Moorpark, where a very nice show of portrait painting is opening up, including some of Francesco’s work, who I mentioned in a post a couple of weeks ago. I’m looking forward to it. After the reception I’ll head back to campus to meet Megan and Murray.

Posted in Life, Making work, Openings, Other people's work, Tarot-related paintings, The Cardinal Virtues | 1 Comment

Angels

Posted on March 13, 2009 by pearce

There are two layers of gesso on each of the four pieces I stretched yesterday, and I’ve been looking at these tall canvases considering how to use them, and I keep coming back to an image of white figures emerging from whiteness, the polar opposite of what I have painted in the dark. Perhaps these are the balance to the darkness of the past work. I can’t help thinking that these images are connected to spiritual reawakening and revitalization. Angels are the messengers of God, traveling between the material world and the divine world with ease, the workers of the divine will. 

I want to make an exhibit of these white paintings that are displayed opposite their counterpart black paintings, in which the angels emerge and disappear into darkness. 

I’m not abandoning the cards project, by any means, because I think the angels will be fairly fast projects to complete. I have to find my models for them first, which should be fairly easy here at the university. I’m looking forward to getting started.

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Practical

Posted on March 11, 2009 by pearce

Continuing with the practical mood, I stretched some left over ends of canvas that I’ve been saving for a while, simply stapling them onto the face of some good quality plywood with plastic sheeting covering the front of it. Once the fabric was stapled nice and tight I sprayed them with distilled water so that any funky little creases would drop out prior to painting gesso onto them. Those three stacked up on the right are the ones we made a few days ago for the tarot cards. Time for gesso.
The woodshop is looking good, here’s a picture of the finished bench, which saw its first use this morning when I stretched a painting by Francesco onto newly made bars. It was so good to be able to use the bench for the purpose that we intended, and wonderful not to have to cut wood and put bars together on the floor.

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Woodshop 2

Posted on March 10, 2009 by pearce

img_8847We’ve finished building the first work bench in the new wood-shop, so now we can produce panels and stretchers to our hearts content. Awesome! Sam and Jason did a fine job building them with me, and we had a good time working together. The picture shows Sam on the left explaining some  joinery techniques to Jason, (one of our students) with the bench about half way complete. After we finished the top we attached a shelf below for storing pieces of panels.

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The Devil

Posted on March 9, 2009 by pearce

I’ve been chatting with my friend Sean Sobczak (he makes those beautiful light sculptures) about posing for the Devil card, one of the most dramatic in the deck. Clearly intended as a warning against enslavement to vice of all kinds, the Devil is a tricky one to shoot, but I think it will be really fun to get it right. Here are three versions of the card from the Marseilles deck, the Etteilla and the Waite deck. Very dramatic!

There are some interesting problems to resolve – hermaphrodite, animal legs, wings, chained male and female figures. Sean says he’s up for the challenge…

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Woodshop

Posted on March 9, 2009 by pearce

We’ve started making progress turning the little studio next to the large painting studio into a woodshop, clearing out paintings that were being stored there and moving carpentry equipment in. Tomorrow we’ll build work benches along one of the walls and set up some of the smaller equipment ready for use, then we’ll wait for a while until we have the old sink and kitchen cabinets removed so we can make another wall of work benches. We have an excellent table saw and chop saw, so relatively soon we should be able to turn out panels and stretcher bars with great ease. 

It turned into a very practical day, in fact. I stretched three more canvases over plywood for the tarot paintings, so I hope to start work on Fortitude, the Empress and the Star fairly quickly. I don’t anticipate Justice or the Sun taking a huge amount of time to finish, although obviously the Sun will lag behind Justice. I haven’t gessoed anything yet, so I’ll have to get that started tomorrow.

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Twins

Posted on March 8, 2009 by pearce

Building up the skin tone with a second layer, the boys are beginning to take shape as people instead of blobby blue things. Pretty rough at present, looking forward to subsequent layers refining and fixing them. Half of the battle of painting is knowing when to stop so that what you have that is working can be preserved for next time you work the image. When it’s dry you  can simply wipe away new work if it’s no good, while working with it wet can be disastrous.

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