Sunday, March 21, 2010

On Till Eulenspiegel and Painting On Glass


I became acquainted with stories of Till Eulenspiegel, somewhere at the boundary between childhood and adolescence.
Till’s picaresque stories, the never ending surprises in his destiny and his travels far and wide, held my imagination captive.

It seemed only natural that I would return to these musings later on in life to give Till Eulenspiegel a place in a painting on glass.

The Till Eulenspigel in my painting strikes a pose that harkens back to the masters of the Italian Renaissance, a time when the actual Till, the sea and land farer, likely lived.

As I painted Till, I went back to my months of studying Pierro della Francesca and Simone Martini, and to everything they had taught me, so I can get at the spirit of the  ‘land farer’.

There is something special about painting on glass. 

It allows one to capture, in a translucent setting, movement and light.

Especially movement - which Till Eulenspiegel was all about.