Above is a small painting i made while living in Paris. I didn't keep much of the work i made while staying at the cite, but i decided to hold onto this one. I remember standing in front of this little painting late at night with a cheap pair of scissors provided by the studio (or that a previous resident had left behind) and i started to scratch at the surface and think.
I was thinking about a hero and Leon Golub came to mind. I always admired the scale of his works and the difficulty of the subjects he portrayed and i was so surprised when i watched some videos of Leon on youtube to find that he was a gentle man of small stature. All i could think about was the amount of energy it must have taken to create such colossal works of art.
However, his later works are the works for me. Later in life, when Leon's health was failing, i read that he returned to drawing in sketchbooks as he no longer had the energy to work on large-scale paintings. Although this may sound like a closing chapter, it is much more to the tune of a man who adapted and succeeded. Recently, Leon's late drawings, which had previously been overlooked received their due attention with a major travelling show titled Live and Die like a Lion? curated by Brett Littman, Executive Director of The Drawing Center in New York. The later drawings are full of dark humour and fun and games, and as a result are all the more appealing and enjoyable. Anyway, i don't quite know what etching the man's name into paint means, only that i felt the need to leave it there from the moment i wrote it and i'm still glad that i kept it. Here's one of my faves of Leon's below.
Leon Golub - Alarmed dog encountering pink, 2004
No comments:
Post a Comment