Galleries – Portraits (Contemporary)

Some years ago I had the good fortune of attending (with my son, Brahm) a wonderful “Sound Music” workshop conducted by Paul Winter at the Rowe Conference Center near our home in MA. Pauls’ music has inspired me since my early teens when I first saw him perform the “Icarus” album with his Winter Consort in Central Park. His deeply spiritual music and the connection of his music to the earth, its’ inhabitants and ecology, has always resonated with me and throughout the years I often listen to his music when I paint, particularly my “Grand Landscapes”. The idea for this series was born when Paul humbly and generously agreed to pose for my camera at the workshop.

The following 6 portraits where done for my 2009 exhibition “Mixing It Up”, at the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts, in Springfield, Ma. I had wanted to pay tribute to artists with whom I have had personal interaction and with whom I deeply respect.

: “Celebrating a World of Music – Portrait of the Artist Paul Winter ” Mixed media digital collage painting, acrylic paint, acrylic modeling paste, acrylic gels, sand, and pigmented ink on canvas mounted on masonite panel, 17″ x 12″

: “Portrait of the Artist Peter Kitchell” Mixed media digital collage painting, acrylic paint, acrylic skin, oil and alkyd paint, watercolor on paper, acrylic gels, and pigmented ink on canvas mounted on masonite panel, 12″ x 17″

: “Portrait of the Artist Peter Kitchell” Mixed media digital collage painting, acrylic paint, acrylic skin, oil and alkyd paint, watercolor on paper, acrylic gels, and pigmented ink on canvas mounted on masonite panel, 12″ x 17″

: “Portrait of the Artist Jane Lund” Mixed media digital collage painting, acrylic paint, watercolor and gouache on watercolor canvas, acrylic skins and gels, and pigmented ink on canvas mounted on masonite panel, 17″ x 12″

: “Portrait of the Artist Jane Lund” – detail 1, oil and alkyd paint on acrylic skin

: “Portrait of the Artist Jane Lund” – detail 2, oil and alkyd paint on acrylic skin

: “Portrait of the Artist Jane Lund” – detail 3, gouache, oil and alkyd on cut watercolor canvas – Jane posed for the photo, (“Banana Hands”), used as reference for this small cut out painting, one of the weeks she taught pastel painting at my Studio South, Casa de los Artistas. It pays homage to the gorgeous little cut out gouache collage series she has done.

: “Portrait of the Artist James Steinberg” Mixed media digital collage painting, acrylic paint, acrylic modeling paste, acrylic gels and pigmented ink on canvas mounted on masonite panel, 17″ x 12″

: “Portrait of the Artist James Steinberg” – detail 1, oil, alkyd and acrylic paints and acrylic gels

: “Portrait of the Artist James Steinberg” – detail 2, oil, alkyd and acrylic paints and acrylic gels

: “Portrait of the Artist James Steinberg” – detail 3, oil, alkyd and acrylic paints and acrylic gels

: “Portrait of the Artist Robert Markey” Mixed media digital collage painting, oil and alkyd paint, sumi-e ink on primed handmade paper, acrylic paint, acrylic gels and pigmented ink on canvas mounted on masonite panel, 12″ x 17″

: “Portrait of the Artist Robert Markey” – detail 1, sumi-e ink and acrylic on primed handmade paper

: “Portrait of the Artist Robert Markey” – detail 2, oil, alkyd, acrylic and sumi-e ink on primed handmade paper

: “Self – Portrait of the Artist Robert Masla – Out of the Blue” Mixed media digital collage painting, oil and alkyd paint, pencils and sumi-e ink on primed handmade paper, acrylic paint, acrylic gels and pigmented ink on canvas mounted on masonite panel, 17″ x 12″

: “Kalya Tapasya – The Transforming Fire of Time”, (Self Portrait completed on my 50th birthday for the opening of a 30 year retrospective at the R. Michelson Galleries) 30″x40″ – Acrylic, acrylic gels, modeling paste, pumice and pigmented inks on canvas.

: “Kalya Tapasya – The Transforming Fire of Time” -detail 1 Textured abstraction painted over background

: “Kalya Tapasya – The Transforming Fire of Time” – detail 2 – Tapasya – The Transforming Fire Within This piece “Kalya Tapasya – The Transforming Fire of Time”, was created just before my 50th birthday and is both a culmination and a combination of many media and images of myself and my artwork over a period of thirty years. It consists of Sumi-e brush and ink, oil, alkyd and acrylic paint as well as roplex medium, acrylic gels, procion dyes and pigmented ink, along with digital photography, all on a 30″ x 40″ canvas. The “base” or “background” of the painting – the “flame” is from a 40″x60″ painting I did in 1977 called “Tapasya- the Transforming Fire Within”.

: “Kalya Tapasya – The Transforming Fire of Time” – detail 3

: ” Kalya Tapasya – The Transforming Fire of Time” – detail 4 The cross legged figure at top is from a black and white photograph of myself from the same time period, sitting atop a gravestone inscribed with the name BLISS below me. The upside down self portrait was an oil painting I did the week after my father died in 1989. That piece is called “Cathartic Self Portrait” – as I cried through most of the execution of it. The painting was a vehicle for self healing, as I mourned the unexpected loss of my father, and as I continually stared into the mirror, seeing my father within me more and more in ways I had not been previously aware of.

: “Kalya Tapasya – The Transforming Fire of Time” – detail 5 The Feather Healers Stll Soar

: Detail 6

: detail 6a – “Kalya Tapasya – The Transforming Fire of Time” – detail 6 and 6a – from – The Feather Healers Stll Soar, detail 5) The 2 snake like figures adorning either side of the canvas are from a period right after this, in which I executed a lot of highly detailed, richly symbolic, trompe l’oeil still life paintings that bordered on the edge of surrealism. The snakes in that canvas as well as this one, (as in many of the worlds “aboriginal” cultures), represent change and transformation, as well as the energy of change embodied. Looking back at that period, I believe I was trying to exert whatever control I could (the easiest place being my artwork) on an external world seemingly going out of control, (at that same time, I was diagnosed with glaucoma).

: “Kalya Tapasya – The Transforming Fire of Time” – detail – full image revisited as thumbnail

: “Kalya Tapasya – The Transforming Fire of Time” – detail – SelvesPortrait, – oil, alkyd, acrylic, charcoal on linen and wood, 9’x9′

: “Kalya Tapasya – The Transforming Fire of Time” – This is a detail from the painting below, “Dealing with Eye Problems”. I scanned it into the computer, removed the section of the painting of the cast eye and flipped it verticle when I inserted it into the digital collage.

: “Kalya Tapasya – The Transforming Fire of Time” – detail – “Dealing with Eye Problems” oil and alkyd on panel, 14″ x 13″

: “Kalya Tapasya – The Transforming Fire of Time”