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ART & ANTIQUES
December 1999 |
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Studio Session
Waxing Poetic
In the hands of Tony Scherman, an ancient painting technique finally gets its due.
by John Fitzgerald
If it's true that all artists have their collective eye on perfection, Toronto-based Tony Scherman, whose paintings are shown and collected across North America and Europe, labors in a medium that almost guarantees he won't achieve it. "I only realized that when I had too much blood on my hands and couldn't go back," jokes the slight, animated Scherman as he takes a break from his studio work to sit over coffee in the city's fashionable Hazelton Lanes complex.
Scherman, a graduate of London's Royal Academy [sic] of Art (where he earned an M.A.), is reflecting on the exhilaration and pain of an enduring passion. For 25 years, he has been one of the foremost practitioners of the ancient (and tricky) technique of encaustic painting, which involves melted wax mixed with oil paints and pigment. His mastery has allowed him to create images that are by turns subtle and startling, elegant and gritty.
Encaustic gives depth, lushness and rich layering to the finished surface and was employed by the Greeks and Romans in the first centuries A.D. for the painting of portraits and the decoration of panels. Although its wax properties make encaustic more durable than tempera, it's also ferociously labor-intensive and often depends on split-second timing to achieve its effect.
That's one reason encaustic was largely abandoned throughout the centuries - until Jasper Johns revived it with his flag and target paintings in the 1950s. Aside from Scherman, though, few contemporary painters followed suit.
"I sort of love it and curse it," muses the 49-year-old artist. "It's a very physical method. It's like being a short-order cook. Besides paints, I work with wax and a frying pan. Then I scrape off [the wax] and burn it with a blow torch. I've been in hospital a couple of times with injuries. My joy comes from knowing that I've pushed the use of this medium. When it does what I want it to do, there's a big psychological payoff. I'm not interested in expressing myself or being known for a certain style. The goal is that my expression becomes transparent. What I'm after is to paint myself out of the pictures entirely."
Whether or not he achieves that, Scherman's output has found its way into eager hands. His works are included in the public collections of more than a dozen museums, including The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, The High Museum in Atlanta and the Art Gallery of Ontario in his native Toronto; he's also sought-after as a critic and lecturer. He has a restless imagination and a keen intellect, both of which are evident to anyone who meets him.
This day, his thoughts range from the merits of the great 17th-century Spanish painter Diego Velázquez and the impact of the Marxist avant-garde on 20th-century art, to beds (a potential subject) and, for good measure, his ongoing project painting Gillian Anderson of television's "X-Files" as the central figure in Gustav Flaubert's 19th-century classic Madame Bovary.
Whether animals, food, flowers or figures drawn from history, mythology, literature or popular culture, Scherman's subject matter can incubate for years before he is ready to put paint (and wax) to canvas. And each is approached obliquely, through the back door.
Fascinated by fluctuating fortunes, those up-and-down cycles that bedevil people's lives, including the famous and infamous, Scherman looks to the story behind the story. "1789: Napoleon and the French Revolution," his series on one of the most momentous events in modern history, began with what Scherman calls "forensic portraits" of Napoleon Bonaparte, which show the emperor shaving at different periods in his life. Much as one would be when facing a mirror - a supremely honest, intimate moment - Napoleon's eyes are deep in their own gaze. Each picture reveals the evolution of a life, and ultimately the erosion caused by time, temperament and changed circumstances - from the 13-year-old boy at military school to the defeated dictator dying in exile on the island of St. Helena.
Wanting to paint Macbeth, Scherman deconstructed Shakespeare's play in his series "Banquo's Funeral," done in the mid-90s, by focusing on the character whom the tormented Scottish kind murders. "The narrative painting is still the lowest of the low," Scherman explains. "And I'm spending all this time to re-invent it. Although what I'm doing is deconstructive on one level, it's also classical in the sense that I have a subject and the subject signifies a theme."
Except when he's traveling or in the studio, the rhythm of Scherman's life is regulated by the demands of raising his family. He and his British-born wife, painter Margaret Priest, who also was at the Royal Academy [sic], have three children, ages 24, 21 and 19. "We've had a lucky bounce," he admits. "I wanted to give them a life like and old-fashioned TV sitcom: a house, two dogs, cooked breakfasts. And I think we succeeded.
"As for my work, when I was a kid going to art classes, I could speak to myself through the images I made. Today, for me painting is still necessary."
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| “Chez les Robespierre II”, 1996-98, 60” x 60”, was part of a recent show at SOMA Gallery in La Jolla, Calif. |
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| Like the wax and paint he works with, many of Scherman’s subjects also reflect the artist’s seeming fascination with layering and complexity. His psychological treatment of everyday living juxtaposed against the malevolent presence of evil is acutely felt in works such as “Robespierre’s Dream”, 1997, 30” x 30”. |
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| A 1998 work, "Wagram" fixes the viewer with an almost uncomfortably honest gaze; it measures 72" x72". |
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| "The New Boss: Jacques", 1997-98, 30" x 30", is from Scherman's "About 1789" series; "Marriage of Louis XVI" (below), 1997, 36" x 36". |
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