"Blackground" Paintings 3: Innovators

 2 August 2021

Blackground Paintings 3

Innovators

"Poe Meets Dickens"

 

 

In March of 1842 Edgar Allan Poe called on Charles Dickens at the United States Hotel in Philadelphia.  This painting depicts Poe reading from a manuscript to the seated Dickens.  The raven in the upper left connects the two in literature.  Dickens' pet raven, "Grip," was included in his novel Barnaby Grudge in 1841.  The bird died that year and is preserved in a display case in the Rare Books department of the Philadelphia Free Library.  Poe's most famous work, The Raven, appeared in 1845.  Dickens here gestures to the date 1842 Philª, the year and place of their meeting, on the book before him.  The gold ornamental bracket partially framing the scene is characteristic of 19th century book binding gilt stamped covers.  I have signed in a monogram I designed in the same spirit.

"Saints of Science"

 

Modern science owes much of its foundation to Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, James Clerk Maxwell’s A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field, and Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species.  I thought they warranted a hagiographic treatment with a scientific twist.  Here Maxwell is haloed with an electromagnetic field, Newton with a diagram of the motion of the major bodies in the Solar System, and Darwin is surrounded by a cladogram of life on Earth.  Like the rest of this group, the subjects are isolated on a black ground and there is much use of metallic paint in the detailing.

"Leonardo Dreams of Flight"

 

Leonardo da Vinci was the ultimate renaissance polymath.  An artist, engineer scientist, cartographer, and more, we remember him especially for his (on paper) inventions of an ornithopter, helical screw helicopter, pyramidal parachute, various gliders and other hypothetical instruments of flight.  I painted Leonardo here in deep thought with the gulls soaring in the sky, Florence and her Cattederale di Santa Maria del Fiore in the distance. Above Leonardo in gold glyphs are his visions of airborne devices of his imagination.  I have patterned these images on those from his own notebooks, in gold linework on a black ground.

"For Unto Us"

 

 

 

 I have fond memories of performances of Handel’s Messiah from my late high school and college years when I was a member of Wilmington’s Capella Club.   I and a couple of friends were the only teenaged members of this group which performed major oratorios at the Longwood Gardens outdoor theater, with the water fountain theater curtain, and at Grace Methodist Church, with its magnificent Tiffany stained glass behind the sanctuary. I still have my hand-me-down Messiah score, much annotated, which I rebound in hardcover in the early 1960s.  While I haven’t participated in any choral singing groups in many decades, The Messiah remains an important part of my Christmas sentiments

 I have provided Georg Friedrich with a small chorus and an accompanying orchestral ensemble.   I created a monogram for the maestro and I signed with a corresponding personal monogram symmetrically akimbo to Handel’s torso.  Two angels join the performance from above.  A rank of organ pipes halos Handel’s powdered coif.

 I wanted Handel to have a baroque setting, but not a traditional ornate baroque frame.  Later in the summer I painted a baroque-revival “crest” on Masonite which is now screwed through support cribbing onto the gallery wrap canvas painting.  As a starting point I used as a model a thrift store candelabra.

 

In the crest for the painting I introduced some symmetry-breaking features and a few musical notation details.  I added a small scroll with a title adopted from one of the oratorio's choruses.