When I suggested to my wife that I paint her portrait as Medusa, her response was immediately positive, as we work well on collaborative projects. I wanted to paint Medusa because I have often revisited the classics through my career, while my wife had her own reason to pose for such a subject. The first time I painted Medusa was perhaps fifteen years ago, a painting of Perseus holding Medusa’s head, with her Gorgon sisters in the background. I have often made use of snakes in combination with alluring females. I use the Serpent with Eve every time I do a Garden of Eden or a Fall of Man, which I have done in both painting and etching. I did a series of portraits of a woman who did exotic dances with pythons; and when my children were young, there was always a collection of rodents and snakes in the kitchen closet, where it was warm – so snakes have always been a part of my life.

Biblical writers used the snake as a symbol of Satan, the dark angel, but most other cultures understand snakes differently, as a symbol of generation, death, and resurrection. In certain cultures, the snake is a female symbol of sexuality, healing, and wisdom. Places where snakes abound – like caves with natural water sources, and therefore snakes – are experienced as holy, and countless sacred sites have been established around these dark, damp places.

Medusa’s head in classical times was used as a warning to stay away, much as the skull and crossbones is used today. It stood for both danger and as a caution to be wary because you were on hallowed ground. Women’s mystery cults used such masks to frighten off male intruders. Medusa is the prototypical gargoyle. But prior to Greece’s adoption of Medusa, she was the serpent goddess of wisdom.

Just this past year I revisited the theme of Perseus and Andromeda, in which Medusa is basically a prop, and this suggested a close-up portrait of Medusa as an independent work.

When the opportunity came up to do a portrait for the national competition, I thought perhaps something a little more challenging and unconventional might be fun – thus the idea of my wife as Medusa – a woman with snakes in her head.

The convention usage of the term suggests neurotic behavior of an inconvenient or even dangerous nature. But it also refers to the unleashing of the sacred – which of course is also frightening. When I suggested that I wanted her to play the role of Medusa, I saw the symbolism in regards to the sacred nature of every person, and most especially of those we love.

When I met my wife seven years ago, she had already been through two surgeries for breast cancer, and in our first year together she had two more, resulting in a mastectomy. This was an issue of some impact to me, because I had lost my first wife to cancer about a year before. It only occurred to me a couple of weeks ago that the four skulls depicted in the first image symbolize the four surgeries.

When I first knew her, my wife wore only black, shapeless clothing, and she suffered from extreme self consciousness after her mastectomy. But these past few years she’s worked to overcome her body issues through her art and her interest in unstitched clothing. She insisted that we use the older, less western styles of wrapping that do not cover the chest but – in her case – expose the scars from the surgeries she has survived. While it is clearly not socially correct to expose yourself in most pubic situations, artists and models get by with a lot that other people would not choose to do – refusing to hide. In this way, my wife embodies Medusa’s willingness to make the best of her disfigurement.

I wanted to feature Medusa’s double-sided nature in this painting, so I opted for a lenticular painting, which shifts the image as the viewer passes back and forth in front of the painting. We selected costuming and poses for a series of photographic studies. During this time, I refined my drawings for the final paintings, while cutting and grounding the two panels I wanted to use. I had my son Michael, a woodworker, cut both panels into 4” wide vertical strips, which then I clamped back together on separate supporting panels.

Based on my numerous photo studies, I made five preliminary paintings of the full length figure in pastel. At this point I decided upon and added the secondary elements around the figure – polychrome relief carvings based on a Babylonian angel of death, and an early Greek Gorgon. To these I added a few human skulls, a shrunken head and the smashed head of a Mayan sacrificial urn, all from my collection.

For the first painting, I used egg tempera to paint Medusa in her role as a member of divine royalty and snake goddess. I painted the figure from life, and took the drapery, serpent headdress, and secondary elements from the pastel studies.

The second image was more problematic, as I wanted a look somewhat wilder and more hysterical than would be possible to hold for the length of a sitting. So my wife photoshopped some of the more animated head shots into various alarming combinations, and from a selection of these I painted four head studies, then used two of those for the second image’s head, using a pose I’d developed in the earlier pastels.

For this second painting, I decided to use encaustic, as it has a rough, spontaneous texture that is quite distinct from the elegance of egg tempera.

When the paintings were finished, I delivered the panels to Michael so he could fabricate a special frame that would hold the strips at 90 degrees to one another, making a three-dimensional painting that looks different depending on the viewing position – in this case revealing Medusa’s internal and external selves interlocked. My wife points out that her portrait only seems to have a normal chest when the images are at their most confused.

Friends and family are concerned that perhaps this painting illustrates some negativity in our relationship. We both are amused by their attitudes, as we have made a study of the dark side of human nature, and contentedly explore topics that make others uneasy.

we’ve never done dragon.con.  the closest we got was being invited to show jim’s admittedly pre-modern way with egg tempera at a society for creative anachronism festival a few years ago.  it was great, he got to dress in medieval costume.  i should post a picture.

in the fall of last year, jim happened to be in kerry, the west coast of ireland.  and his host kindly showed him thru the black valley and the gap of dunloe, two of the most scenic spots on this planet.  and he fell in love with the place.  it’s all post-glacial, with huge boulders in the middle of bog fields, cute-as-buttons waterfalls, dark and craggy mountainsides, runnels of water glinting off the cliffs, quiet lakes draining one into the other all down the valley.

so we took loads o’pictures, and he started painting the landscape.  now, jim doesn’t often do landscapes, he’s more a figure painter.  but if you put in a figure, you can always put that figure into a scene.  and this case, it worked the opposite way.  here were all these powerful landscapes, and what to do?

so the first painting was of a sea serpent attacking a boatload of vikings in a lake in the black valley.

Gap of Dunloe

and then he found pictures of skellig michael, which is a tiny little rock a dozen miles from where i was staying in the back of beyond.  and all of a sudden he decided that dragons lived there, and he’s done a bunch of skellig michael pictures now, each one reflecting the new things he’s been learning about the place.

Dragon with Volcano

Mermaid and Seadragon

Aerial Battle

Dragons Over Skellig Michael

More Dragons over Skellig Michael

Dragon Cathedral

Dragon Convocation

Dragon and Waterfall

Mountain of Skulls

Quetzalcoatl

Dragon / Dancer

Dragon and Old Lady with Lamp

Priestess at Altar

Dragon and Three Figures (Yellow Sky)

Dragon Rider with Axe

Dragon on Rock (Red Sky)

St. Margaret and the Dragon

Andromeda

Figure with Hourglass

these pictures are as much a catalog of what jim’s been up to for the last six months, as a reference for us to be able to figure out what to take to dragon.con.  we’ve got to decide which originals, and which to make into prints.  and we’ve got to be starting to make prints and get them ready, because dragon.con’s only a couple of months away, and we’re really excited to be involved.

we think it’s time enough for jim to have languished in fantasy obscurity.  time for him to come out of the dungeon and blink in the light.

they sat unused in my studio for a couple of years, but i wanted to do some miniature painting in egg tempera, and i took one of these panels and cut it down to a 4×5 inch size (it was something like 8×10).

as soon as i started laying in the egg tempera on the little clayboard panel, i thought – what a lovely surface – and really enjoyed working on it.  i think these panels must be a delightful support to work on for many different media, egg tempera in particular, and i recommend them highly.

while i was still in the process of doing this little painting, i got out the label that came with my clayboard, and read the ingredients and the information the manufacturer supplied, and my first thought was – i have five pounds of kaolin clay sitting on my shelf in the studio that’s probably been there for eight to ten years (leftover from the unsuccessful manufacture of handmade pastels.)  so naturally, i thought – why don’t i make up some of my own?  i can do gesso, why can’t i do clayboard? which i proceeded to start doing within a few days.

i’ve liked the results, i find it no more difficult than doing the traditional gesso.  in fact, for me it may be a little easier, because of the nice simple flow off the brush, and the rapidity of the application, which goes faster than the regular gesso.

after making a number of these panels, and painting on a few, i have made a few inquiries amongst fellow egg tempera painters, whether or not any of them have ever tried making their own clayboard, and so far nobody has come up with any stories about trying it themselves, altho a number of them have tried the commercial product and seem to find it very workable.

also, checking with some technical sources (amien rocks), none of the scientist types seem to come up with any objection to this product on an archival basis.  so it looks like a full speed ahead, go to it situation to me.

and for an artist who is not imaginative enough to market everything he produces almost instantly, the economic advantages are a real consideration.

the recipe

one cup boiling water
1tsp – 1 tbs rabbit skin glue
one cup kaolin clay
1tsp – 1tbs dry pigment (titanium white, or for a warm gray, 1 part raw umber to 3 parts titanium white)

you’ll need

double boiler, or saucepan and bigger saucepan to fit it into, stove to boil water
spoon and measuring cup
gesso brush
sized panels

how to do it

it’s just like mixing up a bunch of rabbit skin gesso, but you use clay instead of marble dust.

boil a cup of water in the small saucepan, and sprinkle the rabbit skin glue into it, stirring well.  use more or less to make the surface more absorbent (less glue) or less absorbent (more glue).  let this cool.  they say to cool it overnight, but i’m not very patient, and usually just wait until all the glue crystals disappear.

mix your pigment with your kaolin.  use more or less pigment depending on how much covering power you need.  mix in roughly a cup of kaolin for every cup of water.  i usually mix up three cups of water and fill my little saucepan.  stir it well.  let this cool, several hours or overnight.

i usually use this time preparing the panels with acrylic size, one coat per board.  there’s no need for two coats, as all you’re doing with the size is making the board somewhat less absorbent, so that the paint goes into the surface, but doesn’t disappear into it.

when you’re ready to coat your boards, heat the clay mixture over a double boiler until it stirs easily.  in summer weather, i only have to heat the mixture up in the morning and it stays workable for hours, sometimes all day.

using your gesso brush, a wide, flat brush, coat your panel and let it dry.  then coat it again.  i put 7 coats on panels i recently made, and several panels got 9 coats.  i could have used more white in the mix to make the opacity build better, but i don’t mind the grain coming thru a little.

when you’ve got enough clay built up on your panel, let it dry well, and then take a razor blade and use the flat of it to scrape over the top of the board.  this knocks off the burrs and scrapes a smooth surface, like a zomboni making ice.  when you’re done scraping, take some fine sandpaper and rub it gently until your surface is as smooth and shiny as you like.  it’s a good idea if you’re going to use it with watermedia to make it super smooth, because imperfections will show.  but if you’re using it as the substrate for oil painting, or encaustic, then who cares, and you might even skip the initial planing with the razor.

nobody makes their own clayboard as far as i can tell.  buying it at the art supply store gets expensive really fast, and i’m against the idea of artists paying thru the nose for art supplies.  so i make all my own supplies whenever possible.  the current batch of clayboard – 16×20 panels – comes from a 4′x8′ sheet of luan plywood from home depot – 20 bucks.  rabbit skin glue is $13 a pound, and a 5-lb bag of kaolin cost us $13 just yesterday, and will go a very long way a cup at a time.  i figure the 16×20 panels cost us about $1.40 apiece, and they’re ten times that at the art supply stores.

some of the panels i have made are substantially larger, twice or three times as big as the largest commercial clayboard panels i’ve seen listed in the catalog.  since these smaller panels retail for several hundred dollars, something two or three times as large would begin to look a little costly.  so i don’t really see having much of a choice should i want to work on clayboard on this particular scale.

Carnival in Venice

James Yarbrough exhibition, Mason Murer Fine Art

James Yarbrough has been a recognized talent in the Southeastern art scene for over four decades, and has been painting daily since 1956 (!).  The new Carnival in Venice series he brought to Mason Murer Fine Art in collaboration with Twenty 21 Collections has taken him 4 years to create, and features over 20 paintings and drawing studies.

His newest exhibition initiates major contemplation about the value of drawing.  Yarbrough included his drawing studies in the Carnival exhibition (extremely rare for artists) and hung them next to their corresponding paintings, showing his creative process to the audience.  Each drawing is so rich in color and texture that they are hard to distinguish from the paintings.  It’s in the drawings where the artist showcases his true talents, and where he connects the most with his audience.

The drawing studies consist of one or two carnival characters in elaborate costumes, but are void of background and foreground development.   Yarbrough places these characters into “environments” by painting them on the streets of Venice with ominous weather tonalities.  He uses the same characters throughout each of the paintings in the exhibition, making all the works united into one large body of related, recognizable work.

When I asked the artist how he enjoyed Venice, he replied that he’d never been.  “I like the costumes, but I don’t necessarily like traveling,” he said.  “My wife suffers the damned trying to get me to go on vacation.”

It’s clear that Yarbrough is most comfortable at home in his studio, where he’s been painting for the last five decades.  “I paint because I want to, what I want to, when I want to,” he said, “which means right after breakfast until lunch, and then back into the studio until dinner.”

James Yarbrough’s Carnival in Venice exhibition will be on display at Mason Murer Fine Art until March 20th.

Posted in Art Reviews. | Tagged: Carvinal in Venice Drawing Drawing Studies James Yarbrough Mason Murer

We found some more completed paintings, mainly ones that usually stay at Erin’s gallery.  And here they are.  If you’re interested in any of these paintings, please contact Erin Wertenberger.

Venice Carnival

Asha

the painting below is the only one exhibited in this group that has not been painted in the last four years.  it was painted in 1974 and is part of an estate collection Erin is handling.

These are the finished paintings on canvas or board that Jim will be exhibiting at Mason Murer Fine Arts, on February 12th.  Media range from acrylic to pastel to egg tempera to encaustic.  The two previous posts contain Jim’s works on paper, which are also on exhibit at the gallery.  If you are interested in purchasing one of these works, please contact Erin Wertenberger for more information.

the artist at 190 years old

ASHA

VENICE CARNIVAL

Below are some of the works on paper he will be showing.  They are drawings and preliminary paintings of his friend Asha, a belly dancer of renown.

If you are interested in any of these paintings, please contact Jim for more information.

I cut a mylar stencil to cover the dancer and her long flowing veil and tape it in place with the panel laying flat on three low stools. One at a time I mix up and then spray a series of colors over the galaxy patterns, eight different layers of color starting with a pale ultramarine over all the light areas, followed by yellow ochre, then a layer of cadmium red medium and white.

You can easily see how far I took down the  value by comparing the unsprayed area of the long flowing veil.

Then come five different layers of spray to go over the darker areas of the painting; beginning with cadmium red medium mixed with gold ochre, followed by ultramarine violet, manganese violet, and permanent violet, each pigment darker than the previous one. The final layer of spray is ultramarine blue again, giving an effect so dark that it could almost be taken for black.

At this point I want to begin creating decorative patterns on my dancer’s skirts.

The first step. I take three pieces of tracing paper and trace out the shape of the four areas of fabric to develop. Then I cut out a window in each piece of paper with a small mat knife. Each mask is laid over its appropriate area and then over that I place a piece of lace. When I spray the tempera over the lace I get an approximate replica of the lace pattern on the painting surface. In this case I sprayed a cadmium red deep mixed with gold ochre over the red section of the skirt and a mixture of ultramarine blue and bone black over the scarf and underskirt.

It will still take a lot of fine brush drawing and highlighting to develop this area but the sprayed pattern at least gives me a good place to start.

Now I turn my attention to the lighter parts of the two galaxies. I begin with a glaze of ultramarine pink over the veil that crosses the center of the painting, and then with a small sea sponge I begin dabbing in a pale mixture of cobalt blue and white into the lighter areas of the more distant galaxy followed by a layer of gold ochre and white and then finished up with  stronger accents of pure titanium white. This particular piece of sponge gives a dozen or so small relatively even spots of paint so it makes an effective texture for dense star patterns. With the forward galaxy I begin in the center with cadmium yellow light and then white to make the center illumination as strong as I can get it and then I use a very light sponging of the cadmium yellow on the radiating arms of the pattern.

These arms need to be darkened so I use burnt sienna, very dilute with egg medium, and with a large round brush to paint in most of the surface of the radiating arms in various degrees of darkness. From here I go right back to the figure with the same brush and paint and further darken the hair, skin, and much of the costume.

I set the second panel aside and go back to the first of these three panels. The original charcoal drawing has pretty strong value contrasts already established, so instead of restating the drawing as I did on the other paintings, I go directly to laying in glazes of local color in each section of the dancer, burnt sienna for the skin color, indian yellow on the hair and halter, diarylide yellow on the skirt and manganese blue on the flowing veil. I deepen the hair and skin in shadowy areas with more burnt sienna or persian red, and the yellow skirt with a second coat of diarylide yellow.

I intend to use the same basic colors and procedures on the nebula behind the dancer as I did on the preceeding panel. My first two pigments are persian red and gold ochre, both mixed with a safflower oil addition to the egg yolk and water medium. I begin laying in washes of the red in the upper part of the painting and work down to the lower left where I use the gold ochre. I want the color more intense, so I add glazes of cadmium red light and then some cadmium red with chrome yellow to produce a rich orange glaze. The stars are drawn in with gold ochre and restated with the orange.

On a number of places on both the right and left edges of the red forms I paint in a thin border of clear medium and then strengthen this with a little titanium white because I want the gesso ground less absorbent in the areas where I plan to have white cloud forms. The medium will make the spray bead up so I can blot it. I use the same treatment for all of the stars.

It takes me a day to design and cut the stencils I need for the next operation. To do this I lay two large sheets of mylar over the painting, tape them in place to avoid slippage and with a felt tip pen trace out the shapes I am going to need. This means almost everything but the white areas. Again I cut the mylar with an electric stencil cutter, a pen with a hot point. After all my stencils are fixed in place, either by a little bit of masking tape or by the weight of a few small coins, I can begin spray painting.

Each pigment I mix up first on a glass slab with egg yolk and water medium, spoon it into a small bottle, and then add more medium and more water.

My little lung-powered sprayer then transfers the paint in a fine mist to the flat surface of the panel. My first layer is of ultramarine blue, the second layer is prussian blue mixed with titanium white, the third layer is cobalt blue with white. I am trying thise variety of pigments to try to see exactly which blue will best suit me.

The next layer is a very dark permanent violet (diossazinico in Italian) which begins to add the very dark blue violets I need. I further modify this with another layer of cobalt blue and still further with a very pale spray in a few places with cobalt blue and white.

Once the tape and coins are carefully removed and the stencils are taken up I can see what I have wrought. A lot of the edges are very hard, so I soften them up with a q-tip and egg medium and a paper towel, and use the same things to bring out a lot of the stars that were hiding under the spray.

The dancer’s large blue green veil now gets a light glaze of cobalt blue as does her skin and hair. This drops the values a little lower and makes the skin a little more natural in color.

Out comes my lung-powered atomizer and I begin to spray all the areas of the panel below the yellow diagonal. At first I work around the flared yellow skirt which is facilitated by the fact that the yellows have a significant oil content (only 6-8%) which somewhat repels the leaner egg medium and allows me to quickly blot up most of the overspray with a wadded up paper towel. I do a series of successive oversprays over the same areas, first with pernament red and cadmium red medium, then with cadmium red light and raw sienna.

Near the end of the session I want a lot more of the red glaze over the yellow skirt so I dilute my red a little further and spray over the skirt a part at a time. As soon as I spray a section the oil content of the yellow underlayer resists the spray, making it bead up, so I immediately brush very lightly over the spray before it can set up with a four inch soft brush which spreads the color in a moderately even soft brushy glaze. The last few touches of the session are with a round sable brush where I take an even more diluted glaze and draw in more defined forms of shadow over the yellow glazes.