Jesse Waugh
Having lived as an experimental ‘artist-at-large’ for the past two decades, I took it upon myself to try my hand at representative oil painting this year. I moved to Florence, Italy, in December, 2012, because I wanted to see how renaissance painters created Beauty on canvas. What I found was that far from being hyperrealist in the execution of their paintings, the Old Masters simply attempted to create Beauty in as realistic a way as was possible. Trompe l’oeil was and is a niche technique. The unitiated often fetishise hyperverisimilitude, believing it to possess the greatest intrin- sic artistic value. But my goal is to create Beauty. I’ve even created my own art movement which I call Pulchrism. So I attempted realism in painting this year merely as a potential vehicle for Beauty. Drawn somewhat unconsciously to silent movie imagery, I began this quest with a still image capture from an old movie, interpreting its general form into my Sacred Hermaphrodite diety 5=6 who descends onto Florence’s Via del Moro. From there I pursued more realistic body contouring with Suffrage and Beauty Disarming Love, learning about background detailing along the way. Finding a beautiful head shot of silent movie actress Lilian Gish on the Inter- net, I was inspired to recreate a version of her in oil paint. I fell in love with her at first sight, and therefore had to name her Galatea. When the summer came to Florence I decided it was time to migrate to my air-conditioned apartment in New York City’s Bowery District. There I paint- ed Cascading Orchids as a still life practice exercise in preparation for Butterfly Goddess - a much larger, more complex work. I soon after completed Unicorn Purifying Water, an accomplished work in my estimation, one inspired by an exhibition of unicorn imagery at the Cloisters in northern Manhattan. After spending a month in Japan seeking out Shinto shrines and Japanese Art Nouveau, I finally returned to the UK and ventured to recreate hothouse flowers
Read this work at the World Public Library (library card needed).