NOTE- The ptg above this line is the REAL Gaugin; the "forgery" is the one at the top of the page in a frame.
Long time no blog ! I've been a VERY bad blogger, just too frenzied with painting for an opening, then two big shows AND managing two websites; somehow Life gets in the way of my blogging. sigh~
It's one of my New Year's Resolution to be much more attentive to my blog, so be sure to come back and give me a shot at redeeming myself. :)
I thought it might be fun to show you how a painting gets made, or at least, part of my personal work process. For seven years now, I've been doing a big show titled "Great Fakes and Forgeries" at the famed Spring Bull Gallery in Newport, artist-owned and operated, very classy place.
The objective of the show is to invite artists to copy the Great Masters, either as a dead-on look-alike, or a dead-on look alike with clever little twists. One year a guy did one of Van Gogh's many self-portraits, but added a backwards baseball cap and earring to Vincent. The work was so astonishingly accurate that at first you thought maybe it was actually an undiscovered Van Gogh ! ( okay, maybe for only 20 seconds or so, but you get what I mean. :)
The show is great fun and annually draws a monster crowd from all over New England; it is quite a tradition to attend it each year. Some of the artists start a year in advance working on their "masterpiece". Mine took only two months, but here's how I did it.
Deciding what Master to "do" is always the biggest issue for me. I usually do Van Gogh or Klimt and have good success with them, but wanted to stretch myself a bit more this year. After several days researching online and at the library, I settled on Gaugin. I agonized over which painting of his to attempt; I found five I felt I could do a decent job with, then began narrowing it down to the final one.
I read as much as I could find about Gaugin; reseraching the artist is an absolute imperative to understanding their work. I learned lots I didn't know and that helps inform my work.
I began with a red underpaint; I am very fond of the cadmium reds. I use an acrylic underpaint because it acts as a siccative ( drying agent) for the oils, and does so very effectively. Use of an underpaint helps the work take shape so much more quickly, and I never get any bouts of EWCS ( Empty White Canvas Syndome).
Not much for pencil sketching, I usually employ a thinned dark color, like burnt umber and "sketch" with the brush directly onto canvas.
While that's still damp, I begin to add in my masses and shadows and start working up the values. I let that dry a bit and then begin adding the colors for each object in the work. At the very end of the painting, I add the highlights.
It was a hoot framing this painting.
I was so sure I had a 16"x20" frame in my studio that I could use for this show, that I didn't go check it out. Bad artist gets the dunce cap. The frame I was counting on had alot of "show wear" and dings, and the corner joints had separated a bit, not suitable for use as it was.
I had to fill cracks, sand, paint it with gold paint, then a triple-clear coat after the gold dried. I couldn't get the filled-in cracks to smooth out the way I wanted, even using a Dremel craft sander. Exasperated & determined not to spend amy more $$, I had a brainstorm: I'd use some fancy heavy rag content art paper I'd bought and stashed two years ago, sort of decoupage it over the ugly corner joints. The paper was a gorgeous black and gold marble. It came in large 8" squares, which I cut diagonally into triangles. I saturated each triangle with archival bookbinder's glue, and using a palette knife tip, worked each triangle over & around the corners. I hurried the drying time with a hair dryer.
After putting my label on the back, I noticed the frame was just the teeniest bit tacky, so had the genius idea to lean it close to my gas stove fireplace.
Of course, I went in the bathroom to get my face on, talking to Casey ( a little Brussels Griffon dog I'm fostering) as I dressed.
Maybe 5 minutes into it I smelled wood burning. I realized what it was and did a cartoon-character skid into the living room and snatched the ( very hot) frame away from the stove. To my amazement, it hadn't actually burned at all, but the paint was raised into an ornate sort of Art Nouveau design where the heat had made it blister, in a perfectly straight line across the bottom of the frame. I liked it so much that I decided to do the top edge, too, so I let it "simmer" for just a couple minutes.
( this is SO not a job for the faint of heart !)
Once again, the design raised up in heavy bas relief along the upper edge. The frame that had started out a beat up and ugly duckling had now been transformed into an elegant swan befitting my painting. Laughing so hard I had tears, off to the gallery I went. Of course, they admired my "unusual" frame ~~~~
Here are pics for you, of how I did the Gaugin. The painting I chose is titled "Two Tahitian Women On The Beach". My "forgery" is titled "Two Tahitian Women With Tunes", amd you'll soon see why. :):):):)
If you're in or around Newport for the month of February, do stop by Spring Bull on Bellevue Ave to check out my Great Fake and the unorthodox framing I did for it.
'Til next time, stay open, think creatively.~
Warmly, Susi
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