Edgar Allan Poe

 

Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe II  -- 20 x 24, 2012

Portrait of Edgar Allan Poe I  -- 24 x 18, 2007

POEtic Inspiration -- 18 x 24, 2009

I've always liked the works of Edgar Allan Poe and just a few years ago I read, or rather had my MacBook read to me, about 95% of his complete works from a file downloaded from gutenberg.org.  Of course his distinctive looks, if not the mystique of his persona, makes him an admirable subject for portraiture and I am surprised it took me until 2007 before deciding to make an attempt at painting him.  The results were quite encouraging (the photo does it little justice) and the piece was sold.  A couple years later when I was thinking up subject matter to fit into a group show at Tory Folliard Gallery entitled "When Animals Talk" I decided I would portray Poe again, this time communing with a raven as he was about to pen his most famous poem.  I was disappointed that many of the viewers of the exhibition didn't seem to know whom the picture was supposed to represent (that boggles the mind!) but I eventually sold the piece myself to a friend who did.  Lately, in my desperate, perhaps futile quest to paint something that someone someday will want to buy, I fell back on familiar and popular subject matter and decided to assay another Poe portrait.  This time I made the painting wide instead of tall as is usual with portraits, and this allowed me to include more of a background.  Passing over the man in black with a cape look, I painted him in a chestnut overcoat that he wore for some of the daguerrotypes taken of him.  I included a cane, which he did carry, and a book to show him a gentleman of culture, even if the slightly frayed cuff reveal the reality of shabby gentility.  The background are naturally suggested by the subject matter of his stories with the obligatory raven and black cat.  

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Valerie the Velonaut

Valerie the Velonaut -- 16 x 20 inches, Acrylic on Museum Board on Panel, 2012

In this painting I depict the adventurous Valerie who is pedaling across the country in her velomobile.  A velomobile is an enclosed recumbent tricycle.  These are popular in the Netherlands, where most of them are made.  Most velomobiles in this country are imported, although some European models are starting to be manufactured here.  This model is the Strada made by Blue Velo in Canada.  Valerie's velo sports a custom paint job and covers over the spoke tires (two in front, one in back like a tadpole trike).  Velomobiles are about a yard wide and from seven to nine feet long, weighing as much as 75 pounds.  Despite the weight, they are faster and much more efficient than even racing bikes, due to an aerodynamic shape that cuts down on drag.  If I had the money and the time to go places, I'd have one of these!

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Safari Girl

Sabina, Safari Girl - Acrylic on Museum Board on Panel, 16 x 20 inches, 2012

Continuing with the idea of the generic portrait, I recently completed the above picture of a character from my imagination, Sabina, the Safari Girl.  This is set somewhere on the savannah of East Africa.  The wildlife pictured are a vervet monkey, a cheetah, some impalas, a zebra, a long-crested eagle, a turquoise-spotted swordtail butterfly, and a rock python (big and scary, but they don't eat many people.)  She has with her a new Sony Cybershot HX200V.   Photography being her main purpose of her safari and not hunting, is evidenced by the fact that the gun she carries is without the telescopic site that would be attached for serious shooting.  The rifle, given to her by her late grandfather who acquired it in the 1950's in South America, is a classic 7mm Spanish Mauser, derived from bolt-action Gewehr 98 developed by German weapon designer and industrialist Paul Mauser in the 1890's.  (It's still supposed to be a great gun.)  Sabina needs it for those nasty snakes and things one encounters on safari.

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Generic Portraits

The Aviatrix,  24 x 20, Acrylic, 2008
Girl Reporter, 24 x 18. Acrylic, 2008
Kings Musketeer, 20 x 16, Acrylic,  2010
Miss Rockford of 2020, 36 x 24, Acrylic, 2005

The generic portrait is halfway between the individual portrait and the picture of the unidentified person; it is a depiction of someone who represents or personifies a class, a type, a specific variety of humanity.  It can be of a person exemplifying a certain period, place or ethnicity.  It can epitomize a person pursuing a particularly activity or profession.  I have, over the years, painted several types of generic portraits, but except for fashion plates and period costume illustrations, I have never compiled a series or built up a collection.  (The idea of doing so has some merit.)  With the generic portrait the artist is spared the necessity of capturing an individual likeness, which can doom the artwork to failure if it is incompletely or unconvincingly accomplished.  But, without a model to reference and with a total reliance upon the imagination, there can be other problems.  For instance, the face has to look good and at the same time represent what it's supposed to -- not always so simple to achieve.  One can, of course, choose a model without the obligation to follow it religiously, and I have done this several times.  There have been times as well when I have set out to paint a celebrity portrait and having fallen short of a modicum of verisimilitude,  turned it into a generic portrait -- who's to know? 

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Allegories in Sepia

The Seven Temptations, 19 x 41, Tempera on shade cloth on Particle Board, 1989.

Apollo and the Muses, 33 x 45, Tempera on Shade Cloth on Hardboard, 1989.

I had begun experimenting with monochromatic paintings in the mid 1980's.  I originally strove to replicate sepia-tone effect of old-fashioned photos, but soon found burnt sienna to be a better color. Not too dark or light, it can be effectively tinted and shaded and in its lighter tints closely matches flesh color.  After having done a fairly large number "sepia" paintings, I endeavored to create some allegorical taleaux/group portraits.  In 1989 I executed the two ambitious works shown here, one drawn from Christian iconography, the Seven Temptations, and the other from classical mythology, Apollo with the nine Muses.  I believe both these works were exhibited at my first show at Phyllis Kind Gallery in Chicago in 1990.  They were eventually purchased by the noted artist Roger Brown and after his death became part of the Roger Brown Study Collection of the Art Institute.

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Nefertiti

 

Nefertiti 31 x 23 inches, 1986

One of the few paintings I have saved for myself, this early portrait of Nefertiti has been hanging behind my bedroom/studio door for more than twenty years.  I painted it almost two years before I had my first art show in 1988, and it was the results from this effort that spurred to work full time as an artist with the idea of being a  selling professional.  After finishing it, I deluded myself into thinking I kinda, sorta had something here.  Perhaps I was wrong: this piece was eventually offered for sale, but there were no takers.  Only years later, after I decided not to sell it, was there any interest in it.

The painting was executed with my early technique.  I mixed tempera paints in coke bottle caps and when they dried I reliquified the paint to a thick consistency with saliva and applied it with flexible plastic styluses made from whipped cream containers and from sewing needles.  The flesh was done with a pointelist technique, little dots of various shades and tints painstakingly applied with a needle.  The painting surface, in this case, consisted of strips of curtain stiffening glued to illustration board and then foamboard.  It provided the perfect texture for the technique.  I employed this technique for several years, but I'm not sure I achieved  as much success with any of my subsequent efforts.  I went on to produce many paintings of Egyptian queens and princesses over a period of years.  This particular piece, although it's not a patch on the famous painted bust in the Berlin Museum, nevertheless continues to hold a certain mystique for me.  

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Vocaloid Portraits

Miku Hatsune, 16 x 22 inches, acrylic on museum board on foam board, 2010

Prima, 16 x 12 inches, acrylic on museum board on foam board, 2010

A decade ago Yamaha developed a synthesized voice that could be used for musical recording.  The individualized computer programs were called vocaloids®.  The first ones were primitive and mechanical sounding, but later vocaloids sounded pretty good, especially singing in Japanese.  (The language seems more suitable than English for this and, frankly, most J-pop singers sound like vocaloids anyway.)  To successfully market them, images and identities were developed for each vocaloid.   The superstar of Japanese vocaloids remains Miku Hatsune (or is Hatsune Miku more correct?).  From her initial recording of a Finnish polka and a smashing version of 70's folk song Misaki Meguri (one of my all-time favorite songs), she has gone on to become a virtual diva, even recently giving a concert in Chicago.  You Tube features many Miku videos with some very delightful songs.  She is portrayed variously in the chiba form, a squat, simple drawing, as an air-brushed anime image, and in a 3-D version.  She wears a variation of a school-girl's costumes and has very long turquoise hair.  In painting her, I drew upon the conventional images, but imagined that she is a real person.  As a companion, I also did a picture of the operatic diva Prima.  Althouhg it isn't something I currently have time for, I would love to purchase the software for Miku and see if I can program her to sing some of the songs I have written over the years.  

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