THE SELF-ISOLATION RESIDENCY 5TH JANUARY 2021: DAY 282

New work in progress: 
Working title: "Turn around, The Summoner's Tale".
Oil paint on canvas, 400 x 400 mm

19, 20, 21: Finding a reason to paint, in search of the sublime. 5th January 2021.
Part 3.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­So, if a painter, if I as a painter abandon the ‘subject’ what am I left with? Where does painting stand without a subject? Many may automatically think that painting has nothing to do if it does not portray some form of subject, that it has lost its raison d’être, that it has no subject matter. But what is often overlooked is the fact that painting, can be and, is its own subject matter. Any painting, worthy of consideration of the name painting, is far more about the subject of painting than about any form or figure that it purports to express.

Let’s take what is now known as the most famous painting in the world, the Mona Lisa, or as it is more formally known La Gioconda, by Leonardo da Vinci, as our example. To the casual observer, or perhaps it would it this point be more appropriate to start to refer to them as ‘spectators’, in the Louvre La Gioconda is an outstanding Renaissance portrait, probably, of Lisa del Giocondo. It is arguably the most famous painting in the world and the irony of this is that its notoriety is based almost entirely on painting processes and techniques which are, it could be rightly said, ‘unobserved’ by these hordes of spectators.

What these spectators overlook in their encounters with La Gioconda, because on the whole they don’t need to be aware of them, are the things that actually make the painting so great. The reason that image is so strong, so memorable and so appealing to so many spectators is in the main due to a process called sfumato (smoke), where Da Vinci built the image up out of, potentially, hundreds of almost transparent layers of paint. It’s this process, this use of paint that makes La Gioconda the great painting that it is.

To be continued…