“Walking Away” Painting Series – ARKS, ADAM AND AXARQUIA

another look at the art of painting from photographs…

The two pictures presented below have both featured in previous posts (here and here), but neither with their template photographs. The “Walking Away” is particularly interesting to me as it has the penned grid over the girl drawn onto the photo itself. Generally, as far as I recall, I would use a sheet of tracing or acetate paper over the photo so as not to ruin it. But, for some reason I didn’t bother in this case. The fact that I only “gridded” the girl is reflected in the relative freedom of the landscape painting. The skiing scene mountain-scape by contrast is much more faithful to the original photo, in form, if not in tonality.

Both pictures present further evidence of what is possible using the humble snap, in terms of expressive potential and dramatic interpretation.

This was a large photograph, and thus atypical for me, as I generally preferred small snaps. I guess that in this case, I felt the figure to be central to the composition and so required the extra detail a larger photo offered. For those interested, the scene is just above the village of Ein Kerem, in the hills just to the west of Jerusalem. The Hadassah University Hospital is at the top left, famous for its synagogue adorned with Marc Chagall’s fabulous twelve stained glass windows, depicting the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

“Walking Away” – 1982 – oil on canvas

This was the more typical small postcard-size snap I preferred to use for making large “blown-up” paintings. The tight containment of the image helped my decision-making processes and prevented me getting distracted by extraneous detail. In this case, I only retained five of the skiers as I felt it accentuated the drama of the moment, and the moodiness is also increased by a tonal shift from a highly photographic cyan (almost indigo) screen to a deep gradation of (mostly) dark cobalt.

“Bormio 3000” – 1983 – Oil on Canvas

My phase of painting large epic landscapes in oils happened to coincide with a period in my life when I spent most summers in Israel. From around 1978 until about 1986 I went there every year, partly out of idealism and partly because I just loved making paintings of the place.

Ein Kerem - Walking Away - Detail 1.jpg — “Walking Away at Ein Kerem” (120 x 170cm∗) – In the Jerusalem Hills – southwest outskirts of the city…

Looking back on that time now I can see that the two motivations were part of the same “condition” and fed an inner yearning to find expression for my youthful optimism and romanticism.

Above the Hula - Detail 1.jpg — “Astrud at Tel Hai” detail (150 x 100cm) – At the south-western entrance to the northern “pan-handle”…

As I think I’ve said before on these pages, Israel, although geographically a tiny country, can often feel vast to the naked eye. Among the hills and valleys of the “pan-handle” of the northern Galilee, and especially in the arid canyons of southern Judea and the Negev Desert, the landscape creates an illusion of almost infinite enormity.

Ein Kerem Triptych - middle panel.jpg — “Pickers at Rest” (153 x 213cm) – Hired Druze pickers enjoying ice-lollies during a break from apple picking on the northern border kibbutz of Yiftach…

My initial efforts were okay as paintings but they failed to transmit the epic quality of the scenes I was depicting. But then I remembered a device often used by my favourite painters of “sublime” landscape, such as Claude Lorraine, William Turner and John Martin, which was to offset the vista against a peopled foreground. This not only gave scale to the views beyond, but also created a feeling of depth and a sense of “moment” with the human figures caught in time.

The Banyas Waterfall.jpg — “The Banyas Falls” (180 x 120cm) – The source of the River Jordan, at the north-western edge of the Golan Heights, and thought by the Macedonian conquerors of 332 BC to be the birth place of the god Pan – hence: the Greek “Panias”, now “Banyas” in modern Hebrew via the previous “Banias…”

So, from about 1981 I began to inhabit my Israeli landscapes with people, normally young people like me, walking away, down a track or road toward some distant horizon. And for me, then, it did the trick, seeming to offer a message of future hope into the bargain.

The Coach Party detail 3.jpg — “The Coach Party” detail (180 x 240cm) – On a roadside cliff edge overlooking the Hula Valley in the north western pan handle…

Sadly (or perhaps fortunately) I failed to record most of the “Walking Away” series (I think I did around ten of them over the course of that year) on camera. In fact, I have very little photographic record of any of my people-in-landscape pictures from that phase of my career.

On Ashqelon Beach - detail 1.jpg — “On the Beach” detail (120 x 180 cm) – A group of my friends on Ashkelon beach on Israel’s southern Mediterranean coast…

However, I have managed to cobble together what you see here, including two from the Walking Away series (one complete and a detail from another) and the rest, mostly details and sections from other pictures.