I was fortunate enough to be in London last week filming some shorts for Winsor & Newton's weekly "Masterclass videos" series. That was a kick, but a bit nerve wracking: some of the demos that I'd so blithely scripted required a lot to go right, first time, on the canvas board that had 2 cameras and 3 video and art professionals focused on it. No pressure there! But it all worked out well, and I learned a great deal about what it takes to film art technique videos. After the work portion of my trip was over, I tacked on a couple of days to see museums. That's totally, laughably inadequate, but it was enough to give me a couple of years worth of thinking in the studio, so I'm satisfied.
What surprised me was that I was as entranced by the 600 year old Tudor portraits with their intricate, gold encrusted brocades as I was by the Sargents and Freuds that I'd gone to see. Perhaps even more so because my expectations were completely overturned.
I'd seen the Tudor portraits in art history tomes forever and flipped the page without much thought for them; they seemed so mannered and all about the outfits, but when I was actually in front of them, I could see that there was a portrait there: a real person who was captured by a long-forgotten artist with staggering skill. The outfit was a big deal, but so was the haughty, or serious, or open face that topped it. And, despite their age, the paintings were in perfect, crack-free condition. Painting on panels will do that, apparently.
Like a kid in a candy shop, I spent the weekend mooning over art, snapping detail images, and forgetting to hydrate myself. I came home with a cold and a head full of wonders.
It was a great adventure that has already had an impact on how I apply paint. Seeing so much virtuosity in so many different styles has reminded me that it's not what you paint, or what style you paint in, it's how confidently you lay your paint down. I saw a lot of great confidence on the museum walls, and that's my take home.
Happy painting!
