Where Angels Fear To Tread 2012, 18"x 24" Oil, gold leaf & ground glass on board

I’ve had the great fortune of working with Nikki Jumper.  She’s responsible for all the images of me you see on this site.  Rebel.  Dreamer.  Crackerjack photographer, marvelous singer/songwriter…and just about the most charming woman I’ve ever met.  It was the blizzard of  ’011…. Snowpocolipse eve….. that I spent the night with this gorgeous creature.  We were preparing for an all day photo shoot the next morning while the snow steadily fell on Ontario.  It’s easy to get hooked on her energy.

I originally thought ‘This thing is gonna paint itself!’.…until, of course, I tried to paint her.  How to capture that moment in a woman’s life…and still fill it with her personality & spirituality?  All of these things were important to me in translating how I felt standing there in front of her and being with her.

Being present is something I strive for.  Making a painting breathe in front of me.  That’s not to say that realism is the only thing I strive for but that the paint itself flows and thrives and gusts along the canvas.  I’m fond of the loose paint itself being part of the story.  I want to give you the feast for the eyes that I feel I’m caught up in when I’m mixing those colors suspended in shiny silky linseed oil.  I can get as easily lost in my palette as I could in space. 

I remember thinking…  ‘wow, her hair is that light, huh?’ …as I churned away at  my palette during our session from life over coffee the morning after our photo shoot.  How the pink in her cheeks and lips reminded me of the delicate insides of pomegranates, like in the cheeks of Caravaggio’s Musicians.   I wanted to capture every bit of it and lock it away to conjure at will.  So enamored with her and her coloring was I.

As life would have it….in came the curve balls.  And I had to put the painting away while I dealt with major life changes.  But out she came with a gust of fresh air.  And back out came my brushes and colors.

So, before you stands the fruit of my efforts that, turns out, was to be the light at the end of the tunnel of a very tumultuous summer and winter for me.  For that and for my friend Nikki, I’m so very grateful.

Thanks for being so iconic. 

I’ve asked our mutual friend and composer Sasha Szlafarski to come up with a piece of music inspired by the painting and he sent me this wonderful piece.  Thank you so much, Sasha!  It’s a gem.

So without further adieu,  please enjoy ‘Wild-Hearted’ by Sasha Szlafarski.

Lazarus

xo

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