Memoir: Chapter 11, Pastels, Friends, Legends, and Icarus Landing

(Written Today) An Art Memoir: Depth, Light, and Love

In the summer of 2001, preceding 9/11, I had an incredibly idyllic time riding my motor scooter to beautiful spots in Rhodes and quickly drawing the beauty of the landscape and the marvelous light. As I've mentioned before, when I'm doing plein air painting or pastel drawing, I take about ten to fifteen minutes to set up the composition. Then I set my watch on a timer for half an hour and draw as fast as humanly possible. When the alarm goes off, I ask myself, "What's the one thing left to do?" and give myself five to ten minutes to do that. Then I would call it done, spray it, carefully cover it with glassine, and tuck it into my portfolio. After that, I would scout for my next location and make another drawing.

Forgive me if I repeat myself, but the experience of drawing plein air pastels gave me an intense feeling of channeling the energy of the universe. That feeling was the theme for big work, shown earlier, The Gift: Releasing Stars into the Universe.

A little about my approach to pastel plein air is that I always used a dark-toned paper. I picked the color of the paper subconsciously, just taking in the totality of the scene, which would give me a feeling of burgundy, brown, midnight blue, or black. It didn't really matter which color I started with because once I began the drawing, I was simply adding warmer or cooler colors to complement the color of the paper. Once I set the timer for 30-minutes, I would pick a pastel one tone lighter[1] than what I was drawing on top of. With new tonal layers I would leave the shadows, go through the midtones, and drive towards the light. And then my final touch was the brightest light.

Preceding this project, I had taken a trip to Los Angeles and reviewed a show of Paul McCarthy's work at MOCA. It was such a disgusting experience. Returning to perceiving reality on a beautiful Greek island and recreating vibrations light, color, and shadow through pastels, zenning out felt like a spiritual cosmic shower washing away all the grime of postmodern crap.

Immediately after 9/11, I put together an online show of these pastels. It felt a little strange to be exhibiting beautiful landscape sketches when the events of 9/11 were so tragic. To honor the first responders, I donated 10% of the proceeds to the New York Firemen's Fund. The donation came to about $200, with heartfelt appreciation for the collectors' support in contributing to the cause.

Here are 24 of those plein air pastel sketches of Rhodes. Interestingly, three of them show Hellenist rock tombs located directly off the side of the main island road.

137 Six pastel landscapes of Rhodes, group A, 2001.

138 Six pastel landscapes of Rhodes, group B, 2001.

139 Six pastel landscapes of Rhodes, group C, 2001.

140 Six pastel landscapes of Rhodes, group D, 2001.

A 13^th Century Church with Frescos Untouched for 800 Years

Sometime in 2002, David Kelly and his wife, Susan McCloskey, came to visit me in Rhodes for about 10 days. They stayed at my home, and we went swimming every day. They rented a car so we could go a little further than I normally would on my motor scooter. On one of our trips to a beach, which incidentally had a Crusader fort at one end, the road ascended a hill. At the top, there was a beautiful overlook of the Mediterranean Sea and a valley dotted with orange and olive groves, and farms. Across the road from the outlook was a tiny one-room church. I hadn't told them about it, but I planned to make this one of our stops.

David had a love of Greek ancient philosophy, and Susan was a Shakespearean scholar. I knew they would appreciate my little surprise. With no one around except a few goats, we walked up to the church. Its rickety wooden door had a wire handle latch; opening it, we stepped inside. Its walls were decorated with authentic 13th-century frescoes, untouched for 800 years. There was no guard, no security—just a small church with historically important frescoes.

From experience and from what Thodoris, my archaeologist friend, told me, I knew that these little churches always had someone keeping an eye on what's going on, like a shepherd or a farmer. So even though it seemed we were alone, there would have been someone noticing that we stopped to look. Though there was no obvious emotional reaction to the visit of the church, I knew David and Susan were absorbing the experience. I was to hear about it later.

Dinner with Friends

One of the most enjoyable dinner parties I've ever participated in included David and Susan. I invited some of my friends to have dinner outside in my courtyard. David and Susan acted as my sous chefs as we prepared smoked salmon pasta. Rhodes has some wonderful red and white wines. Their white wine is kind of like a cross between a prosecco and a chardonnay; it has a hint of bubble to it. At the table were Anna Moody (my model for Venus), and her husband Lefteris, Voula, Mario Ververis, Thodoris, Ingrid Carette, and Nicky Smith. All four of the Greeks were fluent in English enough so that they could make puns. Aside from English, their proficiency in French, German, and Italian. Nikki is what I would have called an international hippie from England. She had lived in Asia and now in Greece, teaching English, and she was a copy editor for my early written works. Her thesis in college was on Raymond Chandler.

During coffee, David wanted to get up to have a smoke. Midway getting up from the table, Nikki asked him about his foundation, the Institute for Objectivist Studies. David proceeded to stand erectly and began to talk about his favorite subject. Mind you, we had all had a few drinks, but David started to give a monologue as if he was lecturing at a podium. I don't know how Nikki did it, but she gently pushed back her chair and began to kneel in front of the table. The more David talked, still holding his unlit cigarette, the more Nikki lowered her body posture, craning her neck to look up at David pseudo-adoringly. I picked up on it right away, knowing Nikki's humor. The charming part was that none of it was ill-intentioned; it was all in fun. I could tell a few minutes later that Susan got it, and she had the most delightful smile on her face, as if she was in love with the universe at that moment. I remember thinking at the time, “David, sit down!” David, like an absent-minded professor, didn't have a clue. And it wasn't until after the party had left that Susan, David, and I reminisced about the dinner party that he found out the jest.

A few weeks after David and Susan arrived home, Susan wrote to me and told me that she cried nonstop on the entire trip home from Greece. She was so moved by the experience and by the incredible lifestyle I had there, as well as by how wonderful my friends were.

Smoked Salmon and Pasta Recipe

From that evening, improvised from Pierre Franey’s Sixty Minute Gourmet. The smoked salmon pasta that night was a huge success; there was not a speck of food left on any of the plates.

Smoked Salmon and Pasta

·         1 pound of smoked salmon, cut into 1-inch pieces

·         1/2 pound fine noodles

·         2 carrots, julienne cut (2-inch strips)

·         4 2” pieces of leeks, julienne cut (2-inch strips)

·         4 large mushrooms, julienne cut (as best as you can do)

·         1/2 cup white wine

·         1/2 cup clam juice

·         1 1/2 cups heavy cream

·         6 tablespoons butter

·         2 tablespoons finely chopped shallots

·         Juice of 1 lemon

·         Salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:

1.       In a saucepan, combine the julienned carrots, leeks, sliced mushrooms, white wine, a pinch of salt, and pepper, and clam juice. Simmer partly covered for 5 minutes.

2.       Add the heavy cream to the vegetable mixture and continue to cook for about 5 minutes.

3.       In another pan, heat 2 tablespoons of butter and add the finely chopped shallots. Cook briefly until the shallots are softened.

4.       Cook the fine noodles according to package instructions. Once done, drain them and toss with 2 tablespoons of butter. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

5.       Add the smoked salmon to the pan with the shallots and cook for about 30 seconds, just to warm the salmon.

6.       Season the vegetable mixture with salt and pepper to taste, then swirl in the remaining butter and the juice of one lemon.

7.       To serve, plate the noodles and top them with the cooked smoked salmon. Spoon the vegetable sauce over the salmon and noodles.

Serves four to six people.

Painting Concept for Dinner with Friends

That dinner party inspired a concept for a monumental painting, my take on da Vinci's The Last Supper, which I was going to title Dinner with Friends. I wanted it to be a secular celebration of being with good friends. The idea was to group people in threes, using the directions of their looks as the thread connecting the three people, like two people looking at each other and then a third looking at one of them. I wanted to evoke mystery and intrigue, for viewers to wonder what their relationships were. I started doing background sketches and pastel portraits for the project, but this was happening a little late in my time in Greece. I simply ran out of time without getting all of the reference material I needed to do the project.

141 Concept sketch for Dinner with Friends.

142 Pastel drawing study for Dinner with Friends.

Pastel Portraits

Using Dinner with Friends as a catalyst, I started to do pastel portraits of my friends. There was one very important twist to my approach to doing these portraits. Normally, when an artist is doing a portrait, the sitter is usually posing and the artist is looking for a good angle of their face and good lighting. I wanted to see what would happen if I posed the model down to their toes, so their entire body was posed as if for a full-figure drawing. I noticed that when their whole body was expressing a theme, there would be slight shifts in the tilt of their head that weren't like an ordinary portrait.

143 Stratos

144 Mario Ververis

145 Suzana Koncut

146 Voula

147 Valia

Another project at this time were companion pieces for Icarus Landing; Venus and Artemis.

Venus

I asked Anna Moody if she would pose for Venus, and she thought about it for a second and then said yes. During our sessions, she told me that the reason she agreed to pose for me was because, when she was a teen, an art teacher was kind to her. The teacher devoted her weekends to making art in her studio and invited Anna to visit. Anna was free to make art or not; regardless, she could hang out while her teacher created art. This had a profound impact on Anna and her respect for artists, as well as for the kindness her teacher showed her. So, by posing for me, she was kind of paying back her teacher.

After Anna posed for two or three hours, her husband would come by. For people who don't know about the experience of posing for an artist, it can create a very profound connection and an intense experience of visibility for the model. If the artist does a good job, the model feels incredibly honored. After the posing session, the three of us sometimes had a wonderful evening in my dining room, talking about work, life, and other topics. I thought highly of Lefteris for his ease and comfort in having his wife pose for me.

The myth of Venus-Aphrodite is kind of weird, and I don't want to go into it too much. But the key point is that she was born arriving from the ocean fully formed. It's an art concept I love because you can create a character that is beautiful, perfect, and fully realized without any baggage. Reality isn't like that, but through art, the artist can wash away inconvenient details and crystallize one idea. Juggling too many elements or psychological nuances leaves artwork incomprehensible.

I also thought about the poet who came up with the original legend, Hesiod. In Greece, there are a few weeks in the summer that are unbearably hot. It is not uncommon to wake up at dawn and go for a swim. It occurred to me that the legend of Venus might have come about from the poet Hesiod walking on a path down to the beach at sunrise and seeing a beautiful, perfectly formed naked woman either coming out of or beside the water.

Many of the art historical depictions of Venus, or the birth of Venus, show her coming out of a clamshell, like the famous Botticelli painting. I wanted to keep this painting with no symbolic gimmicks, but as a hat tip to them, I shaped the rocks behind her to mimic a rough shell.

148 Grid and the Venus canvas.

149 A small charcoal light study for Venus.

Artemis

Ingrid Carette, another dear friend, posed for Artemis. Artemis is an athletic virgin with a strong connection to animals and hunting. Coming from the tennis world, I grew up with women athletes, so I had a high regard for their prowess. For my Artemis, I wanted to change the legend and have her take her animalistic energy into the sexual arena, which would bring her indoors, almost like a wild animal in a soft setting. My wish is that everyone should get to experience a full range of being human, and sex is an important part of that.

Ingrid brought her best to posing. She had very little time to pose, as her job took a lot of time, but she could pose for two hours a week. During one of those sessions, she was preoccupied with some issues she needed to talk about. I was horrified because we would lose those two hours of posing, and I felt an urgency that the painting might never get done.

Acting totally on instinct, I marched into the kitchen and got a ceramic coffee cup. I grabbed Ingrid by the hand and marched her to my front door. She wondered if I was going to throw her out of the house. We walked out the front door, and I handed her the cup, ordering her to throw it against the 13th-century stone walls opposite my house. She looked at me puzzled, and I just said, “Throw it!” She threw the cup. It smashed into bits, and then she started to laugh and laugh and laugh. We went inside, she immediately disrobed, and we carried on with the posing.

150 Ingrid posing for the charcoal study of Artemis.

Body Language

A decade before, during my realism phase, as much as I loved painting details, I wanted to find ways to express themes through their body language. It is much more difficult than most people can imagine.

One interesting example is an experience I had with a model who was a retired classical ballet dancer. She had great poses for life drawing classes, very elegant and looked great from all sides of the room—just a wonderful life model. I asked her to come and pose privately for studies of an Ascension project with the idea that the sun was lifting the model by her solar plexus to the heavens. The dancer tried about 30 poses to get the effect I was after, but all of them were traditional classical ballet gestures—none of them came from her gut, her soul. They were gestures she had learned in ballet class. The “proper” way was so ingrained that she had zero connection between her internal feeling and her body's gesture. I was so frustrated. When I showed her the kind of thing I wanted, she couldn't comprehend the concept. I would have thought a dancer, using their body as an artistic tool of expression, would be a master of body language. Needless to say, I couldn’t use her for the project.

One of my favorite ways of thinking about artistic body language is that if the toes expressed the theme of the artwork, then I and the model were on the right path. I think the figures in the Exaltation Series did a great job of embodying this expressive body language. These explorations of body language brought me to the cusp of one of my best works, Icarus Landing.

Icarus Landing

Perhaps the best summary of Icarus Landing. Is Stephen Hicks’s comment to me about it:

Looking at Icarus, I had a passing thought that you did for the Icarus legend what Rand’s character Richard Halley did in making of the Phaethon legend a triumph. And afterwards I was reminded of Susan’s McCloskey lectures…in which she explained how Rand was aware of the epic figures and forms from the two major traditions in western civilization, the Greco-Roman and the Judeo-Christian, as exemplified in the characters of Odysseus and Jesus, and how with her characters in Atlas Shrugged Rand both incorporated and transcended those traditions. Your Icarus does that with the substance and symbolism of the Greek Icarus and the Christian crucifixion. Incredible.

The concept of Icarus Landing evolved from other visual ideas; it didn't start with the idea of him landing. Initially, I sketched several 30-second drawings of him flying through space like an Apollo without the chariot, a seemingly far-fetched idea. However, living in Greece with the brilliance of the sun and the idyllic landscapes, it's easy to see how those mythologies came about. After several sketches of him flying happily through space, I wondered about alternatives to him crashing. How about landing safely? That was it! I drew variations of him landing and considered how I would land if I had been flying.

In Rhodes, I had done some hiking along jagged rock formations, often hopping up higher than the rock I was aiming for, landing gently on my front foot with my arms held out for balance. When I sketched that idea, surprisingly, it turned into a crucifix pose—crazy, right? But it looked quite beautiful. Then another unexpected dot fell into place: Christ bringing heaven to earth. Wow, I was totally blown away by the two complementary concepts. In one image, I could show that after Icarus flew as high as he could, he brought that wonderful experience safely back to earth, and Christ, instead of being tortured to death, found a way to bring paradise to its rightful place on earth.

On a personal level, I love to pursue my dreams—whether packing up and traveling to a foreign country, trying paintings I've never done before, or accessing my emotional capacities. To throw caution to the wind and try to fly as high as possible. An interesting qualifier is that I overestimate the difficulties by a thousandfold, sometimes resulting in a feeling of relief when problems happen. I don't want to make things too easy, do I? This process has been important in keeping my creativity alive. Consequently, it has encouraged me to challenge the historic legends of Icarus and Christ—changing them from tragedy and denunciation to embracing life on earth.

Thanasis Verdellis

The model for Icarus landing was Thanasis Verdellis. He lived in the old town, about a five-minute walk through the narrow medieval streets from my house. I recall him reading books at a coffee shop. He also played the cello and practiced on pieces like those by Bach. He was in very good shape, with a runner's body. We would have good conversations about art, philosophy, and aesthetics. He also had an independent streak and was always very thoughtful. I felt comfortable with him.

I approached painting Icarus differently than I did the paintings in the Exaltation Series. Instead of a ton of studies integrated into the painting, I wanted to see if I could paint the figure from life. Also, Icarus was going to be my first major work done in acrylic paint. After all the smaller works I did in acrylic, I felt I could succeed at it.

He first posed for a charcoal drawing, which I did in four or five hours of posing. I then went to Kalithea, an area situated near the beach. I waited for the sunset behind me to create the magic hour of the orange glow. I painted a small acrylic landscape of a spot I thought would be ideal for Icarus to land on. I remember going back two or three times and only painting for about 10 or 15 minutes each time to capture that perfect moment when the light was glowing warm.

Then, I drew the composition of his figure in charcoal on the canvas, successfully transferring the small charcoal figure drawing of him using a grid, and then complemented his body by composing the landscape as a background.

After finishing the composition, I started painting in earnest, focusing first on getting the background done or close to done. Then Thanasis would come and pose for two or three hours. For the legs, he had to stand on one leg on a low table, like a coffee table, about two and a half feet off the ground. To get the legs right, he’d have to stand on one leg and either bend it back, like in the painting with the left leg going back, or stand on his left leg and extend his right foot downwards as if ready to land on the rock.

I worked on Icarus over six months, working with Thanasis about once a week.

Two particular things that Thanasi got perfectly: he could put out his arms and relax his hands as if he was feeling the vibration of the air, keeping him afloat. It was the ideal feeling I was after. With his landing foot, he could make it seem as if it was reaching out, preparing to cushion the landing as gently as possible. Also ideal, and those two things made the whole painting work.

Suzana and Thanasis

On one of my visits to a café in the old town, I met Suzana Koncut, a red-haired Slovenian visiting Rhodes. She was sitting alone taking notes while reading a book over coffee. I was soon to find out she was transcribing it. Suzana also posed for one of the pastel portraits in a slightly angular, modern pose, shown earlier.

We had some differences of opinion, but I believe I introduced Suzana to Thanasis. I recall being in that café with the three of us and mentioning that Thanasis was posing for me for Icarus. Suzana was a dancer, a choreographer, and an intellectual. The two of them hit it off, and I remember feeling comfortable enough with them to ask her if she wanted to come by when Thanasis was posing for finished of Icarus.

She did come to my place, and I distinctly remember that I was working on the warm reflective light on the bottom of his right front toe that was also reflecting back to the highest point of the rock, giving it an orange glow as well. Indeed, these were the finishing touches, and Icarus Landing was done and ready to be signed. I got to share that with both of them, a unique and special experience.

I heard from them that after I left Rhodes, their union produced a son who is now a young man.

151 Icarus Landing, 2000, acrylic on linen, 55x36”.

152 My last show in Greece (2002). Motor I, The New Museum of Contemporary Greek Art, Rhodes. Featuring Icarus Landing.

Self-Portrait, Longing

My last completed major work in Rhodes was a year after Icarus, and it is a self-portrait also done in acrylic, titled Longing. I remember starting it, posing in front of a mirror on a summer night, thinking it would only take one or two days, it ended up taking about six months of both posing for and painting it. It was done at night so that I could have a spotlight on the right side of my stomach, a very sensitive spot. There is actually very little contrast between light and dark, but there is extraordinary contrast between complementary colors of warm and cool hues.

One friend visiting me, where my self-portrait was hanging in the guest bedroom, said that it glowed in the dark. I recall that when making it, the spotlight was so hot on my skin. I was close to finishing the painting in the fall when it was really chilly, so there was this contrast between the hot light and the very cold shadows, which I think manifested well with the scarlet and oranges versus the ice-cold blues, greens, and purples.

153 Longing-a Self-Portrait, 2001, acrylic on board, 26×20″.

It's an extraordinarily intimate painting. Once in a while, you get artists doing nude self-portraits, but it's not the norm. I thought I executed it very well and in a discreet manner. What's also interesting is that I was in the throes of developing my career and lectures. In one way, you would think that launching an international career would entail a more generic, brand-like persona that would be incompatible with the intimacy of this self-portrait. On the other hand, it could be a reflection that my reaching out to share my art, aesthetics, and cultural viewpoint was deeply personal and authentic. It was also completed a few days before 9/11, so perhaps the idyllic lifestyle I was having at the time encouraged such intimacy? I don’t know, and it's kind of funny that such a painting, so close to home, is hard to get perspective on even after 2 decades.

154 Motor I, (2002) The New Museum of Contemporary Greek Art, Rhodes. Featuring Longing.

Saying Goodbye to Rhodes

As I look back on my time in Greece, I'm filled with emotions of gratitude, fondness, and joy as I close this important chapter of my life. Eight years spent surrounded by amazing land- and seascapes and inspiring friends. From the extraordinary days of plein air painting to the deep conversations shared over dinners and coffee, Greece was a manifestation of my spiritual home.

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[1] One tone, roughly on a scale 1 – 100, let's say 1 is black and 100 is white.

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