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Pigment ink and acrylic on canvas, 40" x 56", 1993
This portrait of Salvador Dali was part of a series of four portraits of painters (the others being Frida Kahlo, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol), originally created for an article I wrote in the National Association of Desktop Publishers Journal. This artwork, an example of one of my early digital paintings, was created freehand directly on my first Macintosh, a Macintosh IIfx (20/160), using a Wacom graphics tablet & pressure sensitive stylus, and Adobe Photoshop 2.5 software.
'The Christ of St. John of the Cross' (1951, oil on canvas, 80.75" x 45.6", Glasgow Art Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland) is a powerful painting by Dali that shows a dramatic view of Christ on the cross viewed from above with a small boat in a landscape far below. I decided to use this as a basis for the background of my Dali portrait, together with a detail from another Dali painting, 'Metamorphosis of Narcissus' (c. 1936-37, oil on canvas, 20" x 30", The Tate Gallery, London), showing a decaying hand holding an egg with a flower breaking out of it. The two images symbolized for me the breadth of Dali's inspiring vision : stretching from the spiritual and eternal through to the ephemeral, the processes of creation and decay. Both paintings served as reference while I painted the background free-hand. I then used a photograph taken of Dali by Battles Compte, Cadaques, Spain, 1948 (reproduced in 'Dali : the work, the man', author Robert Descharmes publisher Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1984) as visual reference for the final portrait. I wanted to capture Dali'scontemplative side, looking for off into the distance...
All artwork shown is copyright © 2009 Jeremy Sutton
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jeremy@jeremysutton.com
415.641.1221