One of my favorite poets, Mary Oliver, has written a
wonderful book of exquisite essays: “Upstream”. These
lines I share with you are from the chapter entitled "Of
Power and Time".
For
me, it captures precisely what I feel when struggling
with a piece of artwork, be it calligraphy, a drawing,
or a painting; that indefinable agitation that can be
there as you realize yet again that the laundry is not
going to get done, the groceries are not going to buy
themselves and all the dust bunnies in the house have
now multiplied. And it doesn’t matter. You have done the
work. You have gone through the struggle and now you
have a visitor in your studio. It is as palpable a
feeling for me as having had the idea in the first
place. Call it your muse, your angel, the creative
spirit...it is there! And I will do anything to keep it
there with me. Everything is easier. The hand feels
guided. But only after the work has begun in serious
earnest. Total commitment.
The
piece was done on a piece of 16x20" BFK Rives paper,
using gold leaf, acrylics and gouache. I covered the
paper with a base of ultramarine blue and then applied
23K patent gold leaf to the entire surface. |
After lightly rubbing the gold leaf with fine dental
pumice, I then applied many light glazes of alizarin
crimson and indigo blue.
Next came drawing out the angel and deciding where the
text would go, planning everything on tracing paper
before making a mark on the gilded surface. The angel is
by Raphael, drawn from a huge street banner I have
hanging in my house from a show on that artist at the
The Morgan Library. I created some contour on the angel
using molding paste and gesso, building up different
planes using a palette knife. The angel was then gilded
in 24K gold leaf and tooled in a variety of spots to
create texture. (I told Reggie the title of this piece
could be "Two Books of Gold Leaf"!)
The pressurized Roman cap variations were done with a
Mitchell nib (taking great liberties with the structure
of a variety of words!), using naples yellow gouache for
the body of the text and Finetec silver for the
wrestling with the angel sentence. Finally, I took a
deep breath, put diluted naples yellow on a battered old
toothbrush and flicked it all over the piece. I like to
think the angel was holding my hand the whole time! |
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