Notes from the Painter Joao Filipe-Ikons in tempera and gold leaf

Notes from de Painter

João D. Filipe

(Article published by SOCIETY OF TEMPERA PAINTERS-USA 9th Edition Society Newsletter, Summer 2000. Edited by Elaine Drew.)

1767 Knight of Malta seal

Churches, castles and manors - these were my first experiences in my hometown in Portugal. I remember gazing at the ceilings and walls of my Renaissance-Baroque Church, during the long services in Latin; staring at the village castle to school; and visiting friend's manors with their scaring portraits in the stairways and dark paintings in the chapels.

St. Peter Church,Sertã, Portugal, 1400s

I had never thought about any other career then to be a painter, when one day, in Lisbon, a revolution occurred. The next day, April 26, 1974, I found myself in a crowd of people, running like crazy, jumping inside private doors to hide from machine gun shots fired from behind.

The revolution turned communist, the art bourgeois. The resulting economic chaos and social terror - in 1975 I even tasted a horse whip-taught me that in troubled times the good patrons fly abroad, and art becomes secondary and marginal. So I moved to a more practical profession and studied to be a lawyer.

Meanwhile along the way, I found many artists with whom I still share contacts and advice. A painter from Lisbon used to give me space in his studio on the weekends. I went to Madrid and later to Barcelona, arriving in his city on the day Joan Miró died.

My sister in law, an artist from Venice, has been an invaluable help. For weeks I lived in museums in those cities. At this time I discovered my most cherished asset: practice and more practice with other artists.

One morning I was in Rome in front of a sculpture of Nervi, and Pope John Paul II gave me a gift, a beautiful silver cross designed by the Spanish artist Kiko Arguello. Then we went to New York, my wife, my four daughters and I.

Faced with the eminent New York artists, I wondered if I would ever have a small spot on the map. Then I realized that unlike Europe, in America there are still millions of empty walls in churches and homes waiting for something: icons. I'm attracted by their symbolism as a simplification of reality, by their distance from the physical rules of human anatomy, perspective, light and shadow-by their naïveté. They are mysterious; one never grasps everything. One paints the same subjects over and over since the icons - like the music of good composers - are supposed to be retold; they are l'art de la nuance.

Contrary to popular clichés icons have no magic powers and are not cultic objects. Photographs of much-loved family members are often encased in costly silver frames, and are looked with affection and pride, yet we know they are not our loved ones, but pictures. In the same way icons are reminders of a deep spiritual reality: God, Christ, Mary, angels and saints.

I'm not a iconographer living in a romantic monastery on a Greek island. I'm not eastern or Russian; however anyone can paint icons just as the Chinese Yo Yo Ma, for example plays the music of the German Bach. I'm impressed by the simplicity found in the art of the catacombs of Rome and by the primitive Italian painters, above all the Sienese Duccio de Buoninsegna. Although these are my influences I'm walking in my own path. Believing each painter paints is own deep thoughts, his soul, I'm discovering my way painting after painting.

To go on to technical aspects, I know the Old Masters used to have their own trees to produce paper, charcoal, wood panels, and their own chickens to lay the eggs for binder, etc. Since I paint to make a living, I am glad I don't have to kill my sables to make brushes. I can go to a store and get dizzy with the variety available. We can't replicate the reality of the past. One can smash a stone and make pigments but now no one despises air conditioners and copiers or books.

I like to paint on beautiful wood carefully finished and, if possible, antique and dried. Wood acts like a sponge in the way that it reacts to humidity, so sometimes one cannot prevent it from bending and cracking.

As for gesso, I don't respect Duccio; although I learned the classic rabbit skin glue process in Madrid in 1985, for practical reasons I use a commercial brand of acrylic gesso manufactured by Martin F. Weber Co. (item # 1366 in Jerry's Artarama catalog). I like this particular gesso because is very economical and because it has a satisfactory "tooth." It is the only brand I know that doesn't act like rubber. I add distilled water (25%) and more whiting.(20% commercial whiting, Rainbow Products, manufactured by Empire White Products Co. of Newark, NJ). Sometimes I add some burnt umber pigment for tone. This gesso can be applied at room temperature, and my kids can help me with the ten or more coats necessary. I sometimes sand between coats. It takes about a week to get a good surface on a panel; the resulting surface is absorbent and can be sanded to perfection with dry sand paper or, better, with wet. I start with 220 grit, then 320, and finally 400.

I make the drawings on a separate paper and then I transfer the finished sketch to the gessoed panel. As references I prefer less known icons or partial destroyed icons that reconstruct.

I block the drawing with colors made in the classic manner of dried pigments (Sennelier and Winsor & Newton), egg yolk and distilled water. I also use egg tempera in tubes (Sennelier and Rowney). At first I mix the colors with a substantial amount of titanium to counter the natural transparency of egg tempera. At this stage it is better to hide the painting from yourself and others since nobody would believe anything could come of it.

Egg tempera is slow to dry hard. This can make unaware painters desperate. The trick here is to move to another painting and then to another and give the preceding ones two or more days to dry. Two weeks would be wonderful. For me this have the advantage of letting me see my work with a fresh eye, and critical eye. When the right amount of time elapsed I can paint easily without lifting the undercoat.

I start to build forms with thin layers of paint, using thousands of brush stokes. In the beginning nothing appears; the painting is dormant. After about eight separate sessions, to paint, for example, a face the painting springs to life. It's amazing. When I have finished I look at the painting upside down and reversed in a mirror to check for errors.

Sometimes I sacrifice the peach like surface of egg tempera and apply an overall glaze with pigments and Liquin, to unify the colors.

Although this is not very orthodox but I apply the gold leaf after the painting is finished using a technique called assiste. I brush on thin coats of slow gold size, sometimes pigmented with red cadmium. I cover the painting with a box and leave it until the next day when I apply leaves of 23- karat German gold leaf. Even if I don't use bole under the gold I'm able to burnish some parts with an agate stone.

Finally I varnish the paint to protect it against scratches and seal the wood. Since the colors are balanced for interior light the painting must be protected from sunlight and fluorescent light.

In all this process there are many details not revealed here to shorten the description. Everything else can be researched in books, but only practice and your personal sensibility will teach you the steps to follow and errors to avoid. The first requirement for painting with egg tempera is patience; one also needs precision and peace. Creating the right ambiance helps: I don't live in an Italian castle (as, Umberto Eco does), but to concentrate and to block the frequent police sirens in Newark and West New York I used to press a button and the studio was filled with Monteverdi, Telemann, and Handel. And that was cheaper then buying the castle.

Egg tempera is very time consuming and it's not economical rewarding; you would be better off as a plumber. It's not the kind of one hour painting, 50 paintings a week we found in the mall. I feel egg tempera is incomprehensible in a era of instant gratification, and. worse, an era when talent is separate from art. Where an artist can reverse the process of building something and disrupt the nature and make art; or be involved in a scandal and get rich overnight. Egg tempera has a threatened future if ever beauty fades in the world.