1:41PM: the name of this new gouache/watercolor on paper changed today, when i remembered where this church is. My memory was jogged yesterday afternoon when i cam across a photo shot in the ‘90’s of mikela at the entrance to Panachrantou Monastery, high in the mountains, overlooking half the island towards the capital, chora. so i continued painting this morning with new verve, inspired by my memories of that magnificent monastery.
the basic composition remains the same, and i added some accents of color which make it pop more.
i’m in the right mood to make a fe wmore watercolor/goache paintings on paper, from the many photos i’ve taken over the decades, of andros.
while cleaning up a stack of photos, i came across one in black & white, of a painting i made in my athens studio in 1972, of a construction worker named nikos. it’s just one of a large series of paintings of construction workers who i invited to pose in my studio at the time. they were working on an adjacent construction site.
The second image was painted in 1978, also in the Plaka, titled Κολατσιό, 31.5x60.5cm. in egg tempera on board, And the third is titled Window Install II, 45x54cm.,painted in 2022, of workers installing new windows in our Crestone house, which will be included in my upcoming exhibition.
They illustrate one of my passions, and how it has expressed itself over time; in this case, over 50 years! They also illustrate the evoilution of my style, from strict realist to a more abstracted vision, with more breathing space.
BELOW: 3 paintings of construction workers over a 50 year period
Panachrantou Monastery, Andros, 56.5x13.2 cm., day 2
4:33 PM: as i talked about a few days ago, every so often, between now and the opening my my athens exhibition, i’ll be reviewing, commenting on, taking a closer look at some of the paintings that will be hanging in the show. when a painter reaches maturity, sometimes his/her marks gain a clarity, a freedom; an abbreviated deliniation of space that could never have happened at an earler stage in his/her career.
tokyo olympics 18 is a great example. in this detail of the lower portion of the painting, we see the figure of a skateboarder, arms flailing, legs dancing. as in many or most of the other tokyo olympics series of paintings, this figure appeared at the very tail end of my process, along with the figure to his left, in the red striped jersey.
tokyo olympics 18
without him, and his purple shadows, this painting would be much less succcessful as a composition. the juxtaposition of reds, yellows & blues combined with the mix of horizontal/verticals and diagonals takes the eye on a journey, with enough white space to give you a breather.
the small scurrying figures in the middle & upper areas of the composiiton provide a musical counterpoint to the two main figures of the singer and the dancer, while the woman in black at the singer’s shoulder introduces an unexpected, tender note.
the marks, if you look carefully at them by making the detail on the right full screen, are immediate, free, beautifully drawn and fresh. thelonious monk, i propose, would have dug the syncopation.
“…sydysydy said 5 years ago in a youtube comment:
“Almost hitting the note. Playing around the expected note. Implying the note through discord. Creating a new version of the note with atonal harmonics. Textural splashes. The melody never repeats exactly the same way. Monk is the definition of avant-garde. Half pianist, half painter.”