Title: Teeny Weeny Puccini (#2)
Material: Oil on canvas
Size: 48×48
Year: 2017 SOLD
God touched me with His little finger and said ‘Write for the theatre, only for the theatre.’ — Giacomo Puccini
The accompanying quotation sparked this portrait of the artist, played here by Giacomo Puccini, as if that relationship between God and man is rendered by Michelangelo. Puccini was a quiet and reserved man who wrote loud music for 100-piece orchestras and shrieking women.
I here combine classic Italian shapes, and Eastern circle, for a splash of Orientalism. The Italian flag colors create the smooth stone tile beneath every Italian’s Farragamo’s. Flag stone, if you will. The red and green become less saturated and more satinated at the corners, for a sense of costumery and Milanese fashion.
With such relaxing color and that Vitruvian structure, Giacomo’s not going anywhere, so he sits at a café, leaning against the center-line while trying to keep score between cups of espresso. The chair that I depict is one of the two hair-pin chairs I’ve used as an easel in my studio for as long as I’ve been painting.