A tiring third day of painting. Started by making a lamp, as my old one has broken.
The claw will grip onto my window handle, and the board works as a crude reflector (ignore the yellowness of this bulb, I painted with a daylight bulb!). I feel starry-eyed and exhausted, but I'm painting well. I watched part of My Rembrandt, a documentary. One expert was confounded by the potential that Rembrandt had to paint a portrait in one day, but this is quite possible. The quick drying lead white perhaps makes this necessary. He painted, on screen, so very slowly compared to myself.
For me, these days are whipped, like a galley slave. Click, click, speaks the camera on time-lapse. Click. Every 15 seconds I am whipped. Click, beats the drum of the bare-chested coxswain. Click! This camera seems to speed me up, reminding me of the passing of time, but also an eye, observing, making me anxious. Click! There it goes, pushing me on. Click! I kept thinking of the Scott Walker song 'Next'. Click! Paint, it says. Click! Time is short. Life is... Click! Short. I'm concerned about the source images from my computer screen appearing oin the film, these may have licencing issues in a video, so I'll try to mask them.
Unfortunately, the deadline means that this is likely to be a one-layer painting. It will look good enough, but not as good as it could or as good as I can make it. I know I can do better, and I feel this way after making every artwork, painting, piece of music. It remains true. Each artwork is a little better than before, but I know I can do better.
Over the past few days I've thought that Leonardo was unusual in that most of his compositions were collages, not a scene from life from which he copied, but imagined in the way I imagine, then sourcing and creating 'components', one by one. Perhaps all artists historically had some live and some collage parts; did Caravaggio assemble all of his 4 models and make them hold their pose for a week or more? Perhaps, for him, this was important due to the shadows cast by all of his models, but I expect that one or two models could take a day or two off. Most artists had a real place and put the models there, then painted that, but the Virgin of the Rocks never stood in a remote cave next to an angel! Leonardo painted each item separately, hence his interest in light reflections from each component to making the scene appear real. I needed to do this today, for my strange sky, and imagined sea reflections.
Anyone can paint what they see before them, but only a true artist can paint what their mind's eye sees. Art must come from the mind because a painting should be a pictorial representation of an emotion, idea, or mental concept communicated to another mind. Art is not a pictorial representation of a real scene. This is why a photograph is always bad art.
