Seek out the detail and follow fresh routes.
Following my last post, a friend suggested I should read some historical fiction books on Rembrandt, a welcome break from trying to understand Deleuzian philosophy.
I have started with, ‘Rembrandt’s Mirror’ by Kim Devereux where a passage caught my interest. Rembrandt’s mistress to be, Hendrickje, has been searching the streets and returned with a streetwalker/whore, to be a model and Rembrandt is talking to his students:
“Can you see the indentations on her lower thighs from wearing garters? Don’t miss them out, or any other detail; don’t call it ugly or beautiful. Study her with the same care as you would search for a painful but tiny splinter of glass in your finger. Let each line of her body draw your attention, just as the nagging pain of the splinter compels you to look for it with the utmost attentiveness. You are a lot of lazy gawkers. Rouse yourselves, but if you miss one mark, one line, one shadow, one curve – you will miss out on knowing this particular woman right here in front of you and what have you got then? Nothing. And worse whoever looks at your drawing will also miss out on knowing her but not only knowing her - he will miss out on knowing life itself and he will feel cheated. Worst of all he won’t part with the stuiver, (cash) for your work.
This poor battered body is your gateway to the invisible you can make it manifest in your drawing, but you must use your eyes as if you’re very life depended on you knowing her body 100 times better than you know your own.
Once you know every single line on her body by heart and draw her blind, then the invisible part of her will be revealed to you. Her true beauty. Then you will be able to draw her perfectly, using only a handful of strokes with your pencil. But until then you need to lovingly draw each and every wrinkle.
I find myself looking so closely these days at people I talk to, their facial features, gestures, tonal shifts. I love, ‘the image is the gateway to the invisible’. Whenever I am painting my mind shifts between the physical/ technical exploration and a psychological/ invisible idea that aims to reveal itself in paint. Of course, trickery is sometimes required as it is not easy to find a person to model for your thoughts, we do not head out onto the street and ask a street walker to come and model for us these days.
Rembrandts ‘Bathsheba at Her Bath’ actually represents an Old testament story about a woman who becomes Queen having been raped by King David; she was quite possibly modelled on the street walker found by Hendrickje. I have to say I made this tenuous, supersleuth link, as this book always alludes to actual paintings by Rembrandt and if you look closely at Bathsheba, she has an indentation on her left thigh from a garter.
My painting that started out as Alan, modelling in our studios, is no longer Alan, he is currently becoming, a contemplation on life and the futility of holding on to wealth. It comes from one of my father’s favourite 19th Century quotes, ‘Shrouds have no pockets’, and that’s the way he lived his life! It’s a long way from completion and who knows, my idea may change again.
I have also been working on my master copy, Nerdrum's, 'Dr Kagul', working with Nerdrum’s techniques, I am starting to feel the build-up of paint, its fissures and ridges that trap and expose the pigment. Between each dry layer I have been covering the whole painting with a Vandyke brown, ivory black, Payne’s grey mix then rubbing back to re-expose the surface below, then back in again with fresh wet paint and loving it.
Something on the Deleuze... He was an important 20th century Philosopher that challenged traditional Philosophical frameworks. He used the plant ‘rhizome’ as a metaphor, describing an underground system of interconnecting pathways with infinite potential routes; unlike the binary root system that may have a taproot which branches leading from the next to the next, their restrictive pathways limiting the creation of fresh concepts.
The Rhizome has no formal structure, it develops freely without constraint, if a section is cut out, radiating areas do not die, they find new pathways. Wild Ginger, Bamboo and Cooch grass have Rhizomatic systems, they are invasive in New Zealand and trying to eradicate them from your garden is a futile endeavour, I know only too well. I’m sure many of you have heard of the Mycorrhizal fungal networks that’s spread under the surface connecting plants communicating and spreading nutrients establishing mutualistic associations between 80% of plant species. It’s one of the reasons why we should not till the land as it breaks up these important communication networks between plant species.
Anyway, I digress, unsure where I’m going with this one, yet I just find it fascinating. Deleuze draws comparisons between the rhizome, philosophical framework and art practice with their multiplicity of interconnecting routes with no pre-defined pathway, their potential for rupture and reform in a state of continuous renewal. I think it’s something about the endless potential for paint, the infinite combinations of mixing, application and combined with subjective sensation, known facts about form and how we play with these ideas, the possibilities are endless and that is so exciting.