Renaissance

Konstantin Simonovitch/Abbé Jean Revert

A friend asked me if my trip to Florence, Italy had an immediate impact on my painting practice. The influence will only be felt next year, when a number of tunes from records I bought in Florence will be listed in, and painted for, the Top 100 2023. I'm still working on the Top 100 2022, even though I had it nearly finished before I left for Florence a month ago. I had not been in Florence before, and of course, seeing these works that I've known for years from books for real did make an impact. No surprise here: portraiture is my favorite subject matter of the old masters. In portraiture, especially, the real makes a difference compared with a reproduction. The portrait of Savonarola by Fra Bartolomeo did not disappoint, portraits by Titian were to me a great revelation, but to say that I now want to paint like them, no. I have seen a hundred and fifty years of photography history, and I have seen Warhol, Orlan, and Lucian Freud. If any technical matter influenced me it's from an analysis of painting in the Renaissance in a book I've read before flying over; the use of complementary colors as a ground before applying the final color. I kind of knew about but never experimented with it, until the above painting relating to music by Iannis Xenakis. The painting clearly does not have a finished look but I decided it had to be this way. Konstantin Simonovitch and Abbé Jean Revert direct the orchestra and choir respectively on a recording of Polla ta Dhina, a composition by Iannis Xenakis. Simonovitch, further more, directs the Ensemble Instrumental De Musique Contemporaine on Akrata, another Top 100 entry from the same album as Polla ta Dhina. The Simonovitch/Revert painting was the first one I painted since returning from Florence, but I also finished one of the Kirk family illustrating yet another Rahsaan Roland Kirk tune in the list of 100 recordings compiled in 2022. Dothaan Kirk was Roland Kirk's wife, Rory, their son, and Alena a granddaughter.

Rory, Alena, and Dorthaan Kirk