RECONSTRUCTING THE PAST

To ring in the new year, I opened up my studio and began work on a new tesserae piece. I had an older work I could not paint over, as it had oil pastel on the surface and would not allow oil paint to dry or adhere to the canvas. So, I volunteered it for tesserae duty.

Tesserae work involves cutting up old paintings and using the cut-up pieces to construct new images, which in turn are covered with a clear acrylic finish. I had done a series using this technique seven or eight years ago, but had stored away all the chopped canvases when I felt the need to return to regular oil painting. However, now the urge to revisit the technique meant I had to dig out and unwrap the remains of all those old canvases. There were big pieces of recognizable images long gone. In some cases, half an intact canvas was left in good condition. Others were cracked and had paint falling away from the canvas. There were long strips of colors and tiny remnants of houses and faces. But right at the top was the face of my old friend … Garden Royalty … a painted memory from a beautiful vineyard in Tuscany. I had never been satisfied with the final image, and had added it to the canvases that were destroyed back then. I had chopped up much of the grey body and rich dark background to use on other tesserae pieces, but obviously had been reluctant to destroy his snarky visage. But here at last, I was able to give him another life. As I cut and snipped, and worked out how to bring the two works together, I realized how prescient a choice I had made to bring him back to life. Using the remains of his former image, and the colors found in his new venue, I freed him from his self-contained, stodgy, and boring, old self. He has been transformed into a hip dude with a down vibe. In his red striped tee, and pink pants, he appears to be at ease with his new identity. And although the stodgy part still lurks, and one supposes he will always have a tendency to prose on and on about great thoughts, there is nevertheless a sense of humor at work just under the surface of that old stone statue.

Indeed, his tesserae image has become my statement of how adversity and loss can sometimes lead to stronger, more creatively satisfying outcomes.

The latest from my studio. PORTRAIT OF A SURVIVOR  30 x 15 mixed media