Allegory to Foreclosure

At last I finished two more paintings today. Tomorrow I should be able to photograph and post them later on my blog. One thing I've noticed: Paintings are taking me much longer to finish. One thing is to start a painting and have it sketched with colors on panel or canvas and even look semi-finished but to really finish the work requires more than that. A painting takes me from one  to two weeks and in some occasions even a month. One of the paintings that I left at Comma Gallery is titled "Allegory to Foreclosure". I consider this piece to be part of the new series as it moves away from religious subject matter. It is as the title suggests an allegory or symbolical narrative representing the current critical situation of the loss of property that can be quite evident not only in Florida but elsewhere.

Allegory to Foreclosure Oil on Canvas and 

Goldleaf on wood 24" x 24" (2008)

Even though it is not one of my most common studio practices I did use  for this painting a dressed mannequin I made myself with newspaper and junk mail I received when I lived in Altamonte Springs, Florida. This mannequin served as my model for the work, I also took pictures of the beautiful Florida skies and worked from one of the pictures I took. The houses are inspired on the cookie cut houses of Clermont. The demons represent bills, banks, mortgages and other economic pressures that besiege the poor mother and child. These small creatures have been inspired on the work of Hieronimous Bosch.

Example of a hand made miniature mannequin

This studio practice has been used since antiquity and  many painters like El Greco, Vermeer, and Josep Sert had their own miniature or even life-size dressed mannequins posing for their paintings. This enabled them to pay more attention and study fabric and draperies and how these intricate patterns of clothing responded to light. It has been widely used by royal portrait artists who painted the King or Queen and then had a wooden mannequin dressed up as the royal character so the person portrayed did not have to sit for long hours while the painter replicated in his painting the effect of jewelry, armor and silk of any kind of richly ornamented clothes. This studio practice is also very useful when one wishes to paint unreal characters such as flying angels or resurrected beings floating over clouds. By using simple materials such as wire, tape, newspaper and fabric a spotlight and some imagination you can recreate your own character and model for your work.

Athena and her owl

On this second painting I was inspired by the divine figure of Athena, the Greek goddess of Wisdom, culture and the arts.  In ancient Greece she was the protector of the state, agriculture, industry, culture, law and order. She also stand for the virtue of prudence specially in war. The owl and the serpent are her sacred animals. There are many surviving representations of the ancient virgin goddess in statues, vases, coins and paintings. After doing some research on her story and attributes I started a painting based on a classical sculpture and from there added my own updated interpretation. I decided to portray her solemnly at night holding a spear and  a  white owl. Behind her lies a cemetery with a large pantheon like tomb housing a figure that subtly resembles that of the Virgin Mary and child. In the background we see electric posts that seem desolate and functionless as vegetation starts to grow over them. In the distant dark landscape we find artificial lights that hint the existence of a distant city. This picture is asking us to think about the myth of Athena in relation to our own civilization and its so called "modern progress". The goddess stares right at us as if waiting for us to respond to our current state of the world. Where are we heading to? It is a small painting measuring 10.5 inches by 14.5 inches. It is an oil painting on wood panel. The frame was made by my wife Blanca. It is wood and gold leaf with an application of the metal embossing technique in the inner part of it. This is the second completed piece of the series of paintings for "Eradorada" (Golden Age) There should 21 in total.

Proud to present: "Rebirth of Venus" (Venus Revive)

After several weeks of hard work one of my new works is finally done and here am sharing it in blog

"Rebirth of Venus"   (Venus Revive)

Oil and gold leaf on wood carved frame retablo 25.5" x 17.5"

(2009)

The work is a tribute to classical antiquity and mythology but at the same time it is imbued with a message about contemporary culture. It is a reminder of how ephemeral our world today can be in comparison to ancient notions such as beauty and love.Venus is 'revived' in a new world where we find dilapidated billboards  a sunken ship and ephemeral consumer junk around a contaminated coastal area. Out of an old broken tire a plant grows persistently and in the center Venus stands sensuous unveiling her nudity unashamed. Three angels representing the races of man accompany the goddess. The depction of the yellow cloth Venus is holding, the yellow necklace worn by the black angel and the shell he carries suggest that the Santeria Orisha Oshun and the Greek Olympian Aphrodite are the same and one entity, both sensual and spiritual. I am even more interested now in bringing these belief systems together in opposition to the materialist world where we live in. With this in mind I intend to remind the viewer of his of her forgotten spiritual heritage buried under so much mass media waste and consumer products. But as it is implicit in the work, in the end, Nature and what is pure shall prevail.On the top escutcheon  an epithet reads Vivat Venus, which in english would be translated as "Long Live Venus".