Artist's Statement
In the fall of 2009 I asked my wife what she wanted for Christmas. "A Vermeer," she said. Any one would do.
She got her Vermeer.
My wife's Christmas wish, while tongue in cheek, led me to embark on an ambitious (some would say preposterous) project. I would paint exact replicas of the works of Johannes Vermeer of Delft, using as much as possible only the materials, techniques and equipment that had been available to the 17th-century Dutch painter. I looked on it as a training regimen, aimed at improving my capabilities in the use of oil paint.
It was quickly apparent that my attempts to recreate a Vermeer were an abject failure – least of all because I do not live in the 17th century. But failure is often a useful tool for an artist and, in my case, was in the end irrelevant when a much more interesting and fruitful ambition presented itself.
I formulated the following creative problem: What would it be like to create a series of Vermeer facsimiles and translate that experience into my own work? I could apply the lessons learned from a major 17th-century artist to mirror images by a marginal 21st-century artist. I wanted in the course of transcribing Vermeer's pictures to immerse myself as far as I could in his frame of mind, to inhabit the mood of his paintings. I wanted not to just duplicate the paintings, but to imagine what it would have been like to spend months painting them. And it did take months to paint them. Oil painting done properly is, I discovered, a very slow process. Further, I wanted to imagine how Vermeer might use concepts, materials and tools available today to produce comparable pictures.
The subjects I devised seem to parallel his, yet diverge in ways informed by the passage of more than three hundred years. While my own work is but a shadow of the world created by Vermeer, I hope echoes of his light and atmosphere penetrate here and there.
The effort was worthwhile. I have a greater understanding and respect for Vermeer's accomplishment and a better appreciation of my shortcomings as a painter. My answer to the question "What would Vermeer have done?" can be found in the exhibition at WSG Gallery.
