Impasto, Lucian Freud and My Imaginary Tiger

In 2002, when I was part-time working in Barcelona, I saw the portraiture exhibit of Lucian Freud at the Fundacio La Caixa, with a friend. It was a tour of Freud’s work that included Barcelona and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.  It was at that provocative exhibit that I experience the power of the Impasto technique in making the paint, and in this case the portraiture, jump out of the canvas.

Impasto is a technique where paint (often oil) is laid on the canvas in very thick layers. When a painting knife is used, the strokes of the knife are visible. Further, when paint is needed to mix for shades, it is done directly on the canvas increasing the feeling of discovery right in front of one’s eyes. Eventually the Impasto technique provides very dramatic texture, creative lines and strokes, and a three-dimensional feeling as the texture overcomes the flatness of the canvas.

… My canvas is never flat as I use animal skin (mostly hare skin) that I prepare myself. There are always bumps, creases, small tears and natural colorations of the preserved skin.  And when I use my knives to paint in Impasto, the fee of the subject jumping at the viewer becomes even more real.

So, after painting two variations of a puma, decided to paint a tiger. The reason was that the hare skin I prepared ended up narrower and more elongated than usual, giving me the opportunity to change the roundness of a tiger’s face to have a slightly uncommon optical illusion.

But, somehow, when I looked at my “canvas” I could not resist remembering the elongated features of Lucian Freud’s Reflection (Self-portrait) I had seen in Barcelona.  Here is that famous work:

So, my tiger was going to be influenced by that memory!

I first decided to position the tiger face on the hare skin such that the tail of the hare would form a semblant of an ear. A single ear, like a unicorn. After all, this tiger was my own creation based on L. Freud’s self-portrait – a unicorn more than an actual representation of reality.

Here is how the painting progressed. Note the knives I use – one is an actual folding knife, the other the tip of a broken letter-opener! I guess when they said “painting-knife” they did not think that an Armenian in Arizona would actually use a real knife….

Ok, the painting is done and I decided to build a frame from scratch. It is now hanging under a soft light at the entrance of my studio.

Compared to the pumas I have painted, I wanted to give his eyes the psychological mirroring of what was Lucian Freud's life and consequently his work. I hope I am not the only one who sees the influence of L. Freud’s self-portrait on the elongated features of this tiger’s face and through its eyes...

November 10, 2018

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2018