Masterful Remakes

 "I think that the very earliest influence was a horror of having to work in a bank or an office, a desire for a free and creative life." - Frank Auerbach.

Oh, how those words ring true! After a long career in mortgage banking, I broke free to experience a creative life. I could have probably found another job in another big bank or company but I felt like I had hit the wall and needed to be more authentic to myself.

Sometimes life and especially that of an artist seems to be like navigating raging white waters. It is going so fast that all we can do is try to avoid the rocks. We generally paint what we know and what is around us. I am not sure the world would have Frank Auerbach if he had not had people around him that could get him out of Nazi Germany. He lost his parents in concentration camps. He ended up in the U.K. and went to art school. How many other great artists have we lost to wars and their inability to escape their rocks in the white water?

Sometimes life and especially that of an artist seems to be like navigating raging white waters. It is going so fast that all we can do is try to avoid the rocks. We generally paint what we know and what is around us. I am not sure the world would have Frank Auerbach if he had not had people around him that could get him out of Nazi Germany. He lost his parents in concentration camps. He ended up in the U.K. and went to art school. How many other great artists have we lost to wars and their inability to escape their rocks in the white water?

This painting (Study after Tician I) was painted in 1965. This and several other paintings were commissioned as studies of Renaissance Master Titan and the painting (Tarquin and Lucretia). I have shown both paintings here.



I do not paint in the expressionistic style of Auerbach but have great appreciation for other styles. We have several things in common. We escaped the really bad circumstances of our birth and the danger of not being alive to create. He also painted many of the subjects of his portraits over and over again. I like doing that myself.. changing the materials, the perspective, or the light of a specific portrait. I don't know about Auerbach but painting helped me cope with a lot of difficult situations and negative thoughts. I hope it has done that for him as well.

Happy Monday! Start your day off properly. Look at imagery or things that bring you great joy. Let that feeling permeate your soul and no matter what happens for the rest of the day, you can recall that feeling of happiness and contentment.

by Renee Bangerter