Pioggia: The Fifth Canonical Style
At one point I had painted so many paintings, and not liking them so much, having over-painted those which I didn't like, I felt confident about making the decision to paint over them without waiting days for the paint to dry. Once oil paint dries it can be very difficult to paint-over, particularly if the paint is thickly-applied and clotted. It saved trouble as well as time wasted to start again at once. If my opinion is unfavorable, I say scrape it all off at once and try again. Don't put it off.
This approach was after I had returned to painting subject matter, figures, mostly. With abstract art it was never easy to tell a good one from a bad one. It was not so much a matter of like or dislike as a shrug of dismay. While I was painting abstractly and tried different approaches, I had found for a good price an oversize palette scraper, which was marked down because it was too big -comically so. That nobody saw a use for it before I did was a recommendation in itself to buy.
I made discovering a use for the big spatula a challenge. By oversize, I mean nine inches in length of tempered stainless steel with a handle. It was not a kitchen utensil. It was just the thing for big canvases (so I thought). It's embarrassing to think about my abstracts at this point in time. Action painting had been passe for a half century. Stubborn, I was determined to squeeze the last drop of expression from Abstract Expressionism. All I can say is I got it out of my system. That's the best spin I can put on the exercise.
Applying oil paint directly onto the canvas, and then, by process, spreading it at random with the big palette scraper was my very own abstract innovation. I called it mixing paint directly on the canvas. Viewers of art who never see the inside of an artist's studio wouldn't know that a painter' mixing board—physical palette—is as unique to each artist as the finished painting hung on the wall. More so, in some instances, because it is the artist's private space -never intended to be seen. My intention was valid, but as a concept, vain.
After putting abstract painting behind me, something told me to keep the big palette scraper. As a tool, it might be used for scraping-off wet figurative paintings I didn't like, immediately, before the paint had a chance to dry. It was the same as before, not to return to a painting for the purpose of elaboration and, after deferred struggle with conscience, totally obliterating it (anyway), with new difficulty, starting over, late.
Then I had an insight, an inspiration, a eureka moment. Striking-off gobs of unwanted wet paint from the canvas with the mighty palette scraper struck me as audacity in itself. The resulting visual effect was appalling, shocking. It was instantaneous abstract expressionism! -abstraction without abstract intent. The original intention of total abstraction was to remove ego from committing paint to canvas. The successful abstract painting “happened,” without apparent intention or motive, as if by accident.
Paintings with a discernible subject do not happen by accident. Drawing in art had fallen by the wayside. The processing of modifying the painted image by summary removal of redundant paint by means of the industrial spatula was a new phase of abstraction, not a return to drawing. To any pair of eyes it is unmistakably a painting that has been obliterated because it's wrong, a mistake, rejected by the artist, and possibly unfairly at that. It is said the artist is least qualified to judge his own work. At least not until it's finished.
What was deferred was obliterating all visible traces of the original. It was a true moment of decision. It was altered decisively, unalterably, but with a pause before the inevitable coup de grâce. It was to be spared from death (and burial), given a second chance. Until finished, until declared finished by the artist, a work of art is a work-in-progress. The academic argument was what made me pause?
The effect reminds me of sfumato (one of the Four Canonical Styles of Painting). It makes a smokey impression, soft-focus, sensitive, painterly. No one knows exactly how Leonardo da Vinci achieved his unique sfumato effects. Calling my technique “sfumato” is a generalization, but my effect has more to do with atmosphere than with shadow, or chiaroscuro, another one of the four canonical styles. To be more precise, it looks less like smoke, (literally sfumato, in Italian), than like rain, Italian pioggia.
Pioggia gives the appearance of rain by conferring a washed look, by means of scraping wet oil paint in broad strokes from the canvas, leaving the image blurred, fading, almost gone. It is a better expression than sfumato for the intended emotional state of my paintings of derelicts and homeless people. Rain is the bane of those living without a roof over the head. Rain reminds human beings that they are human. It is said beasts of the field have not the common sense to get out of the rain.
One-of-a-kind works of art can be viewed at: https://www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/1840403