Venice Rising, late August, 2009
It has been over 4 years since I walked the streets of Venice where I took that panoramic picture on top of San Marcos square overlooking the city. It has been almost 5 months since I began this painting from that picture.
Each morning when I enter my studio I spend a few minutes and sometimes hours reflecting on the journey that the particular canvas I have been painting has been on. Venice Rising has indeed changed and evolved dramatically over the days and weeks, layer upon layer, colour upon colour.
When I close my eyes I try to remember what the city gave me those few early summer days, the impressions that were left, I keep coming back to the colours. The colours of the streets, the buildings, the water, the shops, the glass, the carnival, the atmosphere, the taste….
What I wanted to create in this painting was the memory of a feeling or experience, not a depiction. It wasn’t about creating a representational view of the city rather it was about a process of layering and blending of colours that would achieve the glowing richness that the city embodies. Maybe the years have blurred the lines that have defined my vision of the city, and maybe not.
According to Lodovico Dolce, (1508/10-1568), an Italian painting theorist and humanist, Venetian artists gradually softened their colouring until their manner equaled nature. Rather than beginning with careful drawings, Venetian painters often worked out compositions directly on the canvas, using layered patches of coloured brushstrokes rather than line to define form. Venetian drawings show an interest in how light will affect a body and how colour will describe it in a painting.
It is in those interactions or explosions of colour that have defined the painting now that the canvas is almost complete.
Venice Rising, August 2009, detail.
One Comment
I really like what you have posted–the process of a painting. I,too, do many layers and it is hard to know when one is finished.
I really like the late August version. I think I can see through the lines of colour to the “underpainting”. At this point it seems to reveal the depth you want.