CRUEL HABITATIONS

A large size painting with a complex subject matter has been completed in February for a collector in London, who initially was one of my patrons, but later became a very close friend.

Cruel Habitations, 2009 is a painting comprising many different themes and formats, which reflects the dynamic collaboration with the client.  I love creating work for a specific environment. I like the challenge of working on a commission together with the designers or individual clients to create a distinct sense of place; a space with a life of it’s own.

The commission

This picture has been designed to decorate the Dining Room in a private house in Forrest Gate, East London. The house itself is a clear manifestation of the taste of its owner, a devoted admirer of the Arts & Crafts Movement, collector of an antique furniture, finest lamps and vases, paintings and rare books. Prior to this commission, the client had acquired, over the years, five of my other paintings.

The focus of my work has been to explore various cultural symbols and their interaction with a personal memory. Starting in summer 2008, my research led me to examine some of the finest images of the Venetian architecture, the French countryside, the works of the Old Italian Masters, as well as the modern British social housing projects.

Although I am primarily a traditional realist painter, I have moved into a new media by combining the intimate look of hand-drawn sketchbooks with the museum-quality copies from the Old Masters - to create a slightly surreal hybrid journal for this project.

Cruel Habitations examines a concept of a personal identity through an illustrated journal recording some of the passions and interests, the routines of life, some dreams and some intimate reflections.

The composition is made around the theme of the Last Supper. Its initial reference was Feast in the House of Levi by Veronese, in Galleria del’Accademia, Venice.  The three figures at the table are the characters from Domenico Ghirlandaio, Michelangelo and Dieric Bouts, all representing different aspects of the patron’s character and some personal reference of its own kind, including his passionate interest and considerable knowledge of the Renaissance Art.

The central figure, a surreal collage, manifests the patron himself hosting the supper. The principal theme there is a view of the Alexandra Road Estate in London, a project that my client was very closely involved with. Right behind this figure there is an ornamental panel, where a William Morris motif gets a little twist by mirror-reflections from both sides, like in a kaleidoscope.  One hand is holding a Champaign flute, without which I can not imagine the host of that house, another one - an open book about the working class housing in Britain up to 1914, an excellent choice of my client, which incidentally gives a rather appropriate title to the whole painting.

On the left there is a view of San Marco Laguna in Venice with Palladian San Giorgio Maggiore, whilst on the right one can see a sunny French countryside, perhaps a vineyard of Cotes de Provence.

There is also a pheasant on the table, which represents to me the opulence of the much admired dinner parties in this house.  Finally, the phrase above the arch: “Once the line is decided, organization is all”, suggested by my client and attributed to Stalin, indicates another great passion of his - Socialist movement and European political history. 

The collective result is a complex landscape of an individual experience that escapes from the predictable traditional portrait, a landscape that transcends geography and time and tells a powerful story of a unique person.