naples

Playing with Fire

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I have been soooo busy the last few months on things that required my absolute focus – such as making my wedding dress, teaching, and preparing for an upcoming solo exhibition. I was literally up to my eyeballs in yards and yards of ivory silk, wool and cream, and I discovered some truly wonderful people and places in the process. I am now returning more full-time to the world of paint just when spring has begun in the most glorious fashion, and I am hoping that I will have a little more time for writing about painting.


The Palace of Donn’Anna, Naples, Jules Coignet 1843

Henri Carr - Vesuvius in Eruption, March 1944
Naples - Vesuvius by Kajetonas Sklėrius (1876-1932) 12 x 17 in. watercolor, 1929
Joseph Wright of Derby. Vesuvius in Eruption, with a View over the Islands in the Bay of Naples. c. 1776-80. Oil on canvas. 122 x 176.4
Gustaf Soderberg View of Vesuvius from the Bridge of St-Januarius, Naples 1820 National Museum, Stockholm

One of the images constantly in my mind’s horizon is that of Mount Vesuvius, my next-door neighbor. For those of you who have never been to Naples and have heard rumors about how “dangerous” it is, be aware that the real danger is Vesuvius – a silent fountain of “rebirth” from which gushes the thrills, the fire, the dust, the goosebumps and the chaos that form Naples today, a modern city perched on a delicate historical tapestry. The experience is invigorating and intoxicating for an artist, a true adrenalin rush similar to that first enormous crush. But when in Naples, do as the Neapolitans do: Don’t worry about it. Let it overwhelm you, and in the meantime, if you can concentrate on getting some decent painting done, someday someone might really appreciate it.

Here below are some images/fantasies inspired by the presence of this potent volcano, a little tribute to “playing with fire.”

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Artists featured in alphabetical order include: August Wihlem Julius Ahlhorn, Henry Brokman, Achille Carelli, Henri Carr, Franz Ludwig Catel, Edward William Cooke, Jules Coignet, Christopher DiPietro, Johan Christian Claussen Dahl, Robert Dukes, Robert S. Duncanson, Jacob Philipp Hackert, Alessandro La Volpe, Heinrich Reinhold, Charles Remond, Kajetonas Sklėrius, Gustaf Soderberg, Joseph Mallord William Turner, Pierre Jacques Volaire, Michael Wetzel, Joseph Wright of Derby, Michael Wutky

Dark Alleys & Walter Sickert

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Napoli. Che meraviglia is pretty much all I have to say so far since my arrival. Now that I am feeling a little more settled and have learned my way around in a general way, I am looking forward to exploring all the nooks and crannies – being careful of course when venturing down dark alleys by myself. I have begun painting as well, and I like to keep the windows open so that I can hear the sounds of the motorini, distant hammering, the soccer ball kicking around the courtyard and the sounds of plates clattering. I am wondering if I will be able to incorporate those sounds into the paintings I am beginning.

Whatever one might say about the great sun and light in Israel, I can now personally vouch that it is way over-rated. Just too much of it all the time, never changing, and just too hot.  So hot that it bleaches rather than burns, in my opinion, so that if I had stayed any longer I may have disappeared.  And who wants to feel sticky all the time, from breakfast to dinner? I was once talking to a taxi driver in Israel as we were going from Rehovot to Jerusalem, and he said to me that he loves the heat and sun of Israel, “The hotter the better.” And this he says as we are sitting in sub-zero temperatures of the air-conditioning he has cranked up in his car, for that is how much he “enjoys” the hot weather.

The weather in Naples is changing now from summer sun to autumn rain, and as I make my way around the city to see the different Caravaggio paintings and erotic frescos, it made me think about the work of Walter Sickert (31 May 1860 – 22 January 1942). A German-born English painter and a member of the Camden Town Group, Sickert often favoured somber colors and ordinary people and urban scenes as his subjects, and his works were considered very controversial, even connecting him to murder. He is considered a prominent figure in the transition from Impressionism to modernism, and I can see how he might have been an important influence on certain British painters, particularly Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon and even the young Jenny Saville.



I personally think that his nude paintings are his best works, but I have included here below as many as I could find.  Following Degas’ advice, Sickert painted in the studio, working from drawings and memory as an escape from “the tyranny of nature.” His oeuvre also included portraits of well known personalities and friends, as well as images derived from press photographs. Continued biographical information on Sickert is available here on WetCanvas, and here on Wikipedia.

As much as I do like looking at “dark” paintings from time to time, I don’t particularly revel in them; a good dip down now and then though provides some variety, something I do vastly appreciate, like an enormous platter of antipasti. And of course, Napoli itself. Today I took advantage of a questionable sky and brisk air to explore the neighborhood of Chiaia, with occasional jaunts into alluring doorways and enticing stairs going up up up, ending with an inhalation of sun, salt and surf along Naples’ Riviera.

On the Easel

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My time in Israel is winding down quickly, and with it also my painting time. I have much to look forward to, including the city of Naples, a new home, further academic studies, getting married, seeing my family, as well as all the Italian food and etiquette I have been missing like crazy. Sometimes it can be hard to concentrate on the painting with all the things that need attention right now. I thought I would show a couple of my works in progress in their various stages of starts and restarts before I may find it necessary to pack them away and resume them again later after moving.

The sink study above was a quick one, maybe about an hour at most. I plan on doing another one, but much more “finished,” because I like both quick/sketchy paintings and more defined ones for so many reasons. They have different things to see about the experience of perceiving the space and subject.

The square bedroom ones below instead already involve many days and hours overlapping. I don’t share these because I am happy with them now as they are as a whole, but rather to share the process of what I am thinking about as I paint them and look at them. They have parts or aspects that perhaps I am pleased with or make me think of new directions to take. In the square painting below, for example, I am happy with the back left corner of the room, particularly with the cat cage and Christmas tree sticking out of it. But in order for the painting to be more representative of reality, in my opinion, the painting needs numerous other “days” inside of it, and in particular I need to work on the colors. I may prefer to make this painting more black and white.

This second bedroom start has a bit more room in the approach to the bed, and I like that. I also like the cooler and softer colors, and I am wondering if I don’t want to make the painting a bit more blurry-eyed in general. Below this top surface are, I think, at least 6 or 7 other paintings I had started, though I am not sure I can remember what they were.

This last square painting had originally been an interior one, depicting my kitchen, at least until the washing machine/sidewalk scene outside my front door distracted me so much to the point that I needed to grab the closest, least precious, most suitably sized surface available. Hence, no more kitchen painting. The photo below shows the first half hour of frenzied changes, and it has been an absolute joy to be outdoors painting again. I do this a lot, painting over older paintings, and not because I am convinced that the new painting will be better, but because the new motif interests me more. Painting is a passionate enterprise, involving impulsive actions which can ultimately lead to a failure. But you must take a breath and jump all the same.

About Visual Notations

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Over the last year, I have developed the craving to compile a place for an ever-expanding collection of visual notations, in addition to my personal musings on my own paintings. My new Visual Notation posts will focus on Great Notations and Contemporary Visionists, highlighting painters from then and now who depict the world out there through the process of perception – the mind filtering that takes place as we see, touch, feel, smell or hear something, along with the contemplations, recollections, aesthetic reactions, intuitions and phantasmic proposals of possibility that the mind performs. These perceptual painters are concerned with exploring and learning something more about this world we live in, but cannot be called realist painters in the way known today. They are not interested in painting reality exactly as they see it, for seeing is only one element of the senses. They are humanists, concerned with what the gift of life might mean, and they labor with sincerity, earnestness, humility and arrogance to try to represent it. They stand out for me because they have a gift of acute and broad vision that goes beyond just a delight in the surface of things to the deeper, higher, beautiful abstractions holding everything together, both in the natural world and in the picture plane. They are seriously consumed by the infinite potentials of rectangles and the juxtapositions of colors and shapes within it, and they paint, in my opinion, as if their heart depended on it.

For those of you who have subscribed to my painting blog (the blog tab at the top), you will continue to receive those posts directly to your email, as well as the new visual notation posts. I hope you will enjoy them all. For those new here, please feel free to take a look around and if you wish to receive posts by email, simply click the subscription button below.

The image to the right is a clip from an astounding fresco piece that I came across in Naples at the Museo Archeologico this June. The full painting, down below, depicts the Trojan horse being dragged victoriously into the city of Troy in utter celebration, unaware of the doom to come from the Greeks. There are uncountable art treasures around the world, but these figures and shadows threw me into a time-traveling warp so jolting that I think I may have permanent whiplash.