Many years ago, while walking in the Sleeping Bear Dunes on a snowy day, Troels and I took photos of each other. I created a montage of these images in Adobe Photoshop, and with a few tricks, produced most of the red and green seen here.
After a decade, I pulled the painting out of storage to fix its value problem—there wasn’t a wide enough range of light and dark. I introduced orange and yellow to bring in lighter tones. An artist friend encouraged me to go even further with lighter hues, but I liked what I saw and didn’t want to risk changing it. Now I’m contemplating making a copy of the painting, this time adding those lighter colors.
One historical precedent for an artist revisiting an earlier motif with changes is Titian, the 16th-century Italian painter. He created a second version of his portrait of a prominent cleric, incorporating alterations that subtly comment on the cleric’s fate.
The two portraits depict Archbishop Filippo Archinto—an Italian lawyer, diplomat, papal bureaucrat, and eventually archbishop. The first painting, completed around 1555 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), is not considered especially remarkable compared to the second version, painted in 1558—the year of Archinto’s death in exile—now held by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Political intrigues in Renaissance Italy prevented him from ever assuming his rightful post as Archbishop of Milan.
In the second painting, Titian added a gauzy white curtain that obscures half of the archbishop’s face. The cape, now faded to a reddish brown, was originally painted purple. In the 16th-century Vatican, brilliant purple symbolized sorrow and suffering.
The changes Titian made in the second version of the portrait were not merely aesthetic but carried deeper symbolic meanings tied to the subject’s fate and circumstances.
Wow, interesting!
Thanks, Fran!
I enjoyed your post, Birgit and thoughts about revising or making a new version of a painting. Do the changes you’re making also have a symbolic meaning?
I’ve been considering tonal values in my work also. The degree of variation of value seems associated with certain traditions and academic norms. There are also historical and contemporary styles in painting that limit values. I’ve been exploring these choices in my painting for clarification, to know why I make the choice to limit or expand the range of values.
I may receive feedback to deepen and/or lighten areas of a painting. I think it’s good to question the suggestion as some artists are taught certain “rules” that I don’t choose to follow.
We really have unlimited choices in how we paint!
I have some thoughts about symbolic meaning, but for now, I will leave it open. The impetus to try lighter colors came from a new painting that you started – red and orange with a splash of white. The splash of white was so dramatic against the red background.
Love it, not sure how to describe it, maybe I try wave-fashioning
Thank you, Jonathan. I hope that you will visit some day after I trained my new labradoodle puppy to be better mannered.
Love your increasing playfulness as you return to earlier works.
The additional back story of the “thinning of the veil” w/ symbolic color changes always a bonus.
Thank you, Cindy, for prompting me to think about playfulness in relation to my work. I believe that this also applies to my Motion Series. One of them, ‘Capering along the Shore,’ will be displayed at the B.O.B. during ArtPrize. Another piece, ‘Dancing in the Sky,’ will soon be submitted to a juried show. — As for Titian, I enjoy sharing some gems of art history here.
Analysis by ChatGPT:
This painting presents an abstract and expressionistic approach, featuring two human figures in a stylized landscape.
Key Elements:
Color Palette and Mood: The painting primarily uses bold, contrasting colors such as vibrant reds, greens, and yellows. These colors are not used in a realistic way but instead evoke a sense of warmth, nostalgia, and perhaps an underlying tension. The figures are dominated by saturated tones, with the central figure rendered in red hues and the background figure in green.
Composition and Focus: The composition draws attention to the foreground figure, who is smiling with closed eyes, possibly in a moment of joy or contentment. The person in the background is turned slightly away but appears to be looking back at the viewer. The choice of colors for each figure emphasizes a clear separation between them, even as they share the same space.
Style and Brushwork: The brushwork is loose, and the forms are stylized rather than precise. The figures are abstracted, with minimal facial details. The background and landscape are suggestive rather than detailed, with hints of fields and distant trees sketched in with thin lines.
Themes and Interpretation:
Memory and Emotion: The unusual color choices and abstracted forms suggest the painting might be exploring themes of memory, emotions, or subjective experience. The warm hues evoke a sense of warmth, intimacy, or fondness.
Duality and Contrast: The sharp contrast between the warm reds and cool greens suggests a dynamic between the two figures—perhaps representing contrasting emotions, different perspectives, or a relationship with varying moods.
Ambiguity and Interpretation: The lack of clear detail invites the viewer to engage with the painting on a more emotional or intuitive level, leaving room for different interpretations based on personal experience.
Overall, the painting uses color and abstraction to explore the emotional landscape of a scene, focusing less on realism and more on evoking a mood or capturing a fleeting moment between the two figures.