oil on panel 91x71cm
There's no specific music associated with this, though I did scare myself silly for while with György Ligeti's Lux Aeterna from '2001 a Space Odyssey'. I spent some of the last couple of months listening to an audiobook of William L. Shirer's 'Rise and Fall of the Third Reich' – which was pretty scary too. I did spend a very nice afternoon listening to early Elvis Costello albums though, so here's something a little more upbeat from the first album.
The working title for this in my 'hours book' was 'Hell/Satan', and it was only in the final couple of weeks that 'The Picnic of Mephistopheles' occurred to me. The phrase sounds like something that might exist in a tale somewhere, like 'The Labours of Hercules' or even 'The Damnation of Faust', but it's quite obviously not.
This painting took a long time to compose, and it took a very, very, long time to paint (175hrs 20mins easel time if you must know). It started with an idea – What if Satan, like everybody else, got fed up with work and had a day off? If he did fancy a day off, where would he go? Well, he'd go to the seaside of course. My starting image was a photo of a very dark and sulphurous sky taken on the shore at Cramond, on the Firth of Forth, and I spent ages trying to construct a hellish 'beach scene' from it. Genteel Cramond wasn't quite giving me that, so I ended up – via the harsh landscape of Iceland – in a Galapagos lava field (I'd actually used this 'walk' before for 'Lava'), and gave up on the seaside. The final concept was of this melted landscape, with a cave maybe leading down to another subterranean world. There are at least two different rock landscapes stitched together here; the main area, and the rocks on the left. The sky that I ended up with – again not the original Cramond one – was imported from a midwinter Perthshire dawn, so not a single one of the original sources survived from the initial idea. Towards the end of the work I even shifted the male figure from being Satan to the demon Mephistopheles – mainly because that's a better name.
Looking back, I think I got too distracted by the forms, and lost sight of the tones in the ground and figures. The surface is a strata of pencil and monochrome acrylic underdrawing, and semi-opaque/transparent oil layers, and somewhere along the way I lost sight of my lights and darks. I only really got a grip on them with some final clear glazes on the landscape and figures right at the end. The upper sky - not the sunlit low misty cumulus - started off badly with a horribly miscalculated opaque blue-green grey. After realising this wasn't going anywhere, I obliterated it under a couple of layers of Titanium White. After a bit of planning, and thought, I laid in thin oily veils of yellow, mauvy-blue, and warm grey. That new upper sky is quite subtle and supports the flashier 'sunny' glazed lights very well. I'm quite chuffed with it now, but I should have done that right from the start.
The Mephistopheles demon figure is based on the Austrian actor Anton Walbrook, who is probably best known for his roles in 'The Red Shoes', 'Gaslight', and 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp'. I had previously used him as a model for 'The Serpent' in a painting that, while it doesn't really stand up any more, does feature Madam as the cherubim/guard at the Garden of Eden. (Never mind, you really have to see it). The source picture of him that I used here lacked the proper evening jacket I wanted, and having tweaked him into one, I had to find some suitable legs/trousers to stand him on to give me the pose I wanted. Photoshop is a wonderful thing...
I added the two young ladies for company and entertainment. I found them and their spread of rugs, cakes, and bottles while searching for images of picnics. They're both definitely quite posh – I think they and their companions were actually snapped at Glyndebourne, where those that can afford the tickets slum the breaks between operas with Hampers & Champers, which looks jolly good fun. As it happens, I only recently found that, according to Goethe’s version of the story, Faust’s soul escapes from Mephistopheles while the demon is making improper advances to two angels that have come to the rescue. These two girls here might not be angels, but Goethe's twist could explain why this Mephistopheles looks so miffed.
A lot of attention has been paid to the terrain detail – for a very good reason. A strange thing happens in our brains when we look at random shapes; we try to 'see' recognisable things, usually faces. It happens all the time to me when painting, and I thought I'd utilise those 'faces' in the rocks to make the scene more hellish. I've no doubt a new pair of eyes would see things I've missed, but I'll start you off by pointing out the obvious 'cat skull' at the bottom left hand corner.
This is the last painting done that'll go into my upcoming (imminent!) show at the Open Eye Gallery. It goes public in just over a month - on Friday 6th of September, till Saturday 28th September. I've already sent the gallery the images for the printed cards, and my biography, CV, artist statement etc, as well as other personal back-story and general interest stuff. I now need to concentrate on choosing which pieces are to go in, organize the carrier (there and back), get the associated info in order, tidy up canvas edges where necessary, sign and date pieces that are unsigned and undated, acquire bubble wrap, arrive at prices, and make sure everything's labelled and ready-to-go. And with the continuing warm weather, this painting should be cured enough to be there.
Within the gallery, I'll be in the room on the right as you go in the front door. By a curious coincidence, the painter who'll be showing across the hall, in the left-hand room, will be James Fairgrieve, who was my painting tutor in my second year at college. He introduced our group to oil paint, and taught us how to stretch a canvas.
Which is a very neat coincidence...
