Paying Homage
Australian artist Lance Ross honors the techniques of the past masters with compositions featuring their likeness
Australian artist Lance Ross honors the techniques of the past masters with compositions featuring their likeness
With so much art around these days that I describe as smudges, splodges and smears taking up a lot of the art sales market, it is now a greater challenge to create appealing
traditional works of art for patrons to hang on their walls. It is a great pleasure to work with long-proven art values, ideas and developing skills. Going back some years, all one had to do was paint a landscape competently and it would sell. That would be plein air or from photographs. Edgar Degas said, “Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when
you do.” The more challenging, the greater the satisfaction upon completion.
During an opening night of an art show where I sold my entry, which was a large sailing yacht plunging through rough water and the crew receiving a good shower, a director said, “But you did it from a photograph.” I refrained from answering with, “Yes, I was not able to have them pose for me,” nor did I point out that nearly every other entry was also painted from a photograph. Having spent a major part of my past life illustrating for advertisements combined with my natural bent, I just cannot stop myself aiming at realism. So, how do I achieve that by showing appreciation for more creative techniques and prove my work was not just slavish copying of photographs?
I decided to pay homage to the techniques of great artists from the past, with the whole composition making it clear that I had not just copied a photograph. Fortunately, the Impressionist
era was at a stage in history where black-and-white photography existed. I even found a very short movie film of Claude Monet painting. So he, Auguste Rodin, Vincent van Gogh, Edouard Manet and Pablo Picasso became my subjects. The work featured in this article is my painting of Edouard Manet painting Claude Monet painting.
My Van Gogh painting is of him painting Wheatfield with Cypresses, one of three versions he painted of that scene. Mine sold at an art show and as it is rare to receive comment from buyers you never meet, it was a pleasant surprise when the interstate purchaser emailed, “Over three years we have been searching for a painting that actually had meaning and we love it.” Therefore, I felt I was on a good track to satisfying buyers’ tastes.
Having owned 26 boats and sailed in many places around the world, I have always loved marine subjects and enter a marine art show annually. However, if your work doesn’t sell there, it is usually difficult to sell marine art elsewhere. So, the Monet and this Manet/monet subject ideas were aimed at being able to be sold elsewhere if not purchased at the marine show.
Much of the total time was spent on research: many photographs of Manet, Monet and Monet’s wife, the background scene that appears in a number of Monet’s paintings, Renoir’s paint box became Manet’s, the look of the paint tubes from the Winsor & Newton history website, clothing and hairstyles from the era (boys usually had “pudding basin” haircuts), sail boat rigs, women’s dresses and so on. Monet and Manet’s portraits are from black-andwhite photographs and Camille is from a painting of her by Monet. I could find no full figure reference for Manet, so stuck his head on my body and gave him a shirt style from the time, which, unfortunately, he has stained with color from his palette. Oddly, in nearly every photograph of artists’ painting from that period, they are wearing a suit, collar and tie and, only occasionally, a smock.
Once I was well underway, I worried that viewers would wonder why my version of Monet’s studio boat was so different in color, shape and number of windows to those in Manet’s painting. To validate my rendering, in the bottom left-hand corner I have attached a collage photograph of one of Monet’s own paintings of his studio boat.
Mark Twain said that after food, shelter and security, we need something to do. And practicing art supplies that in spades with pencils, brushes, paint and imagination. Creating art is satisfying, engrossing and rewarding.
Is it good for you? Yes. An American study published in Neurology magazine showed that people practicing art had very much less chance of developing dementia and memory loss. The study showed how various activities reduced the risk of mild cognitive impairment: pottery, quilting and sewing 45 percent less risk; computer use 53 percent; socializing 55 percent; and painting, drawing or sculpting provided 73 percent less risk of memory loss. Art. Get on with it.