Michael Pearce

The first layer of the skin has covered the Hanged Man’s head and chest. I mixed a simple flesh base using Vermilion, Cadmium Orange and Foundation White, then made a dark and light version of it by adding more or less white. Next to it I made some Burnt Sienna and some Raw Umber for the medium darks and the shadows respectively. It’s a good start, and I enjoyed the work, but there’s a lot of editing and correcting to do to make it right. I’ve added a bit of hair under the lowest eye and like the Emperor I’ve given the face a bit more of a beard than Aaron has in reality. I think he needs a necklace, perhaps military ID tags, or something like that that adds to the sensation of suspension.

I’m writing about the Hanged Man while I’m painting him, digging into manuscripts and scholarly texts for more background information on the archetype.  It would be pleasant to think that in the 21^st Century we should have left the cruel history of this medieval punishment behind, but as a specific punishment for treachery its use is now global; in the Iraq war it was practiced by Sunni fighters who tortured traitors then displayed their bodies suspended by one leg in the streets. More recently in the Mexican drug cartel fighting of 2010 the decapitated bodies of four young men were hung upside down from a Cuernavaca bridge with a sign reading “This is what will happen to all those who support the traitor Edgar Valdez Villareal.”

The landscape starts taking shape.

I’m having a great time painting the landscape behind the hanged man, which has populated itself with buildings and trees, and mountains that resemble the ones I see around me here at the edge of the Malibu range. I love the way these mountains stack up, fading layer by layer as they fall away into the distance. In the background behind the man’s elbow on the right hand side I’ve included a view of a strange looking hill that I drive past pretty regularly which always reminds me of a couple of places in England that I know pretty well: first Silbury Hill, which is a man made hill near Avebury that has been a feature of Wiltshire’s landscape for three thousand years; and second Glastonbury Tor, which I have climbed several times and love for its mysterious tower and legendary past as the church that Joseph of Arimathea founded a couple of thousand years ago when he brought the holy grail to England.

I’m using Raw Umber to sketch the landscape, pretty thin with ragged areas to lighten the paint and make gestures suggesting shadows in the dipping and rising waves of the hills and valleys. I painted the lowest part of the sky in a lead white to bring some brightness into the horizon. This will surely change later as I feel out the appearance of the sky, which I want to become quite dramatic.

After a year or so of looking at the the giant mural of the virtues and thinking to myself, “Wow, I should probably do some painting on that…”, I’m officially calling it quits on the thing and painting it over with at  least three other paintings. I can use the blue skies in these other works if I’m careful about it, so the materials won’t be lost, but the virtues project just doesn’t excite me any more. So, on with the Hanged Man, who is taking shape in the middle of the wall.

I’ve changed my mind about the height, because of the impracticality of a twenty foot high painting. I’d LOVE to make a giant painting like that, but it’s going to have to wait until someone commissions it. The new canvas for the Hanged Man will be ten feet high and five wide, a good sized piece of work with the figure receding from a life sized head to a much smaller foot as the body dramatically extends up and away from the viewer. It’s a big mess of Foundation White over blue and white background right now, establishing the rough shape of the figure as he hangs suspended from a rope by one ankle, reaching down toward the ground in his efforts to reach a ring.

I’ll need to research oak trees this time, looking carefully at their leaves and branches because the rope will be lashed to a sturdy branch at the top of the canvas.