Noah Buchanan

Technical and contemporary

Ithas always been the painters of the 16th and 17th centuries that have guided my interests in painting. Principally painters of the figure, of the flesh, these painters relied on calculated, layered systems of painting to arrive at luminous properties in the depiction of the human body. In my studies, my training, and subsequently my work as a painter, I have always hoped to achieve a flicker of the brilliance they brought to painting. Paintings by Caravaggio, Rubens, Van Dyck, Rembrandt, Ribera and Velázquez can be categorized using a contemporary term, indirect painting, which utilizes underpainting techniques such as imprimatura (an earth tone wash to map out the painting) and velatura (semitransparent layers of lead white to build up form in the light), as well as applications of transparent oil with color, or “glazes.” All of these processes are performed with the intention of obtaining highly luminous and fleshy properties in the paint. What heavily inspires me about these

painting methods is the behavior of light and shadow in which the shadows trend toward transparency, earth tonality and are vacant of information; metaphorically they stand for The Void. Conversely, the light is opaque, thick, full of color and detail; it is The Sublime. These painting techniques, and the psychological-cosmological implications they seem to make, intrigue and inspire me, and drive me forward to research their possibilities from canvas to canvas.