This ENSEMBLE of new paintings on the theme of groupings; diversity brought together in a larger ensemble, includes a collection of portraits made in honor of the 50th anniversary of the Cantori Veneziani, a choir of which I am grateful to be a part.
on painting as seeing
I paint directly from life rather than from ideas. Colors and shapes are my inspiration. For me, painting is, first of all, about vision as pure sensation unencumbered by meaning, about the ‘lived experience’ of seeing, when a chaos of colored shapes of light enters my eye, and then the struggle and search to structure that chaos into a harmonious and meaningful whole.
In a way, all my paintings are portraits. I try to capture a very specific moment of visual perception with all its incidental details, its seething mass of surface particulars, and then bring them together, distilled and organized, into a solid structure of human universals.
When I’m painting, there is little distinction between a live sitter and a collection of inanimate objects. Although called ‘natura morta’ nothing about still life is dead to me. Objects in themselves are alive with shape and gesture, and they are animate in their relationships to each other. The spaces between them sparked with the energy of intercommunication, and all shapes on the canvas are in precarious balance within the rectangle. Every brush mark,
every gesture and color contributes to the symphony of the larger whole.
on portraiture
An actual portrait of a human being brings additional layers of complexity to painting. “Likeness” is such a very nuanced affair. We are billions of nearly identical creatures, yet we recognize familiarity from the finest of subtleties: the slightly different spacing of features, the irregular proportions of the skull, the asymmetry of raised eyebrow, the postural balance of head on neck, the character of slouch or upright posture in the chair. We are incredibly
sensitive to these telling details. We see them as revealing an individuals inner life and this raises the stakes in painting. The painting must perfectly reflect the sitter, otherwise it will be a different person. This requires “nerves of steel” (Delacroix), delicate responses and the fearless ability to eliminate all but essentials. In portraiture, the solitary painting process becomes a relationship between two people, with their own thoughts and feelings, perhaps unknown to each other, but ultimately creating something new and ineffable between them. It is a unique and unpredictable journey of nonverbal communication.
on singing in the choir
While painting is generally a solitary experience, choral singing is decidedly communal. As composer John Rutter says: ‘Choral music is not one of life’s frills. It is something that goes to the very heart of our humanity, of our sense of community. When you sing, you express your soul in song. And when you get together with a group of other singers, it becomes more than the sum of the parts.’
Beyond the shared experience, beyond eliciting all the happy endorphins that science now confirms are induced by choral singing, the creation of beautiful sound and structure from the experience of ‘we’ is a way to make the unruly world truly magnificent and understandable.
The goals are similar to painting, but the means are very different. We are singers who come together from many walks of life, across age, experience, lifestyle, worldviews, in pursuit of excellence and the glory of making music together, blending our sounds and our very breath, inspired by music of all eras and a brilliant conductor, each playing their part for the ensemble. Some have been doing this for all of the 50 years since the Cantori Veneziani was
founded! I am relatively new, but infinitely grateful to be part of this legendary group.
the origin story
I sing tenor in the choir and, because my position is in the back row with the men, I almost never see the choir from the front. Instead, over many years and hours of rehearsals and concerts, I see the backs of people’s heads. One evening, after a concert, while we sat around a large table in a restaurant, I was completely mesmerized by the variety of faces before my eyes, one next to the other, each one so different. The rounded faces and the angular ones, the old and the young, assorted textures of hair, width of eyes, glow of complexion, expressions and smiles, blonde, brunette, loud, soft, and so many variations all
of whom had just united into a single piece of music. At that moment a portrait project was born.
My love of singing, something I have done since childhood, has only now crossed paths with my devotion to painting. Not in the obvious way of trying to painting a choir singing, but in a way that fits with my painterly worldview: Many diverse elements each alive in their unique way, come together in harmony toward a larger purpose.
L’articolo ENSEMBLE – meditations on painting and singing proviene da ytali..