Composition #17 (2013) Painting by Iskan

Iskan's Composition #17.

Giclee available; for details and price please email me.

This picture is featured on page 11 of Iskan’s personal catalogue.

Text from the 2015 personal catalogue of Iskan:

SEPTEMBER 2015

You're asking how I lost two kilos in one week, thus realizing that proverbial honest blonde’s dream? Because things got going! Because I'm painting! I'm happy!
I never thought I'd ever be so lucky as to feel as if slightly high all day and to get up two or three times each night. I went to bed at 11 PM without beginning to paint because I simply couldn’t see the forms the way I wanted – big as life – simply because there was nothing to paint. The paint had been already mixed on the palette, balanced in hew and saturation, begging to be used.

So it’s 1:30 AM; sleep has come and gone; it’s the feeling of a starting fever. I fear that if I don’t let it out onto the canvas they'll ship me to a loony farm. A carousel of shapes is spinning in my head but I can't stop it to snatch one out. I go down and dress, take a few gulps of French cognac right from the bottle, try to calm myself and focus. I capture a composition in my head and try to memorize it. There are plenty of canvasses around. I grab one that seems suitable, put it on the easel. I take the main color and start laying the foundation, but it just won’t work. I take another – same thing! I start to get mad. Why doesn’t it work? Perhaps the brushes are crap?! They won’t paint, bitches! And the image is escaping from memory, sinking into the sand. Every minute counts. I take the longest brush I brought from Cannes. It has always helped me out of tough spots. It has a certain springiness to it and bounces off the canvas. The only way to get out of the impasse is to rise above the situation. I step up to the easel from the side like a torero to the bull: the palette is my muleta, the brush is my sword. It’s no use. I change the angle of attack, I move the easel around the study, turn the canvas around three times. Nothing. The head is abuzz with fever, the idea had gone – evaporated. In despair, I break this long-handled Raphaël Kaërell across my knee: such long brushes have never been sold in Russia and the whole Raphaël brand is no longer imported because of the currency exchange rate. I take the main painting knife and try a few strokes. It doesn’t work. I erase it and take another – even worse. The third one is no good either. I collapse. Like a lunatic, I wander around the first floor. In the kitchen I grab a Samurai knife from its holder and apply the paint with it. Bingo! It works! It turns out I needed a heavy, balanced instrument – not a blade of light, springy Swiss steel on a small French olive handle. I dab around with the knife. Now I can finish it with brushes during the day. It’s 4:20 AM.

I go upstairs to sleep.

I'm asleep until something insistent, almost obsessive rises from the dormant depth, dawning upon me with a new combination of colors. This new turmoil grabs me, demanding a new painting. I run down naked; it’s a quarter of an hour till dawn. I mope around, unable to start anything. With artificial lighting there is no chance of getting the right mix when juggling more than three colors, but the twilight is just beginning to turn bluish. I wait. I idle. It would make sense to turn on the computer and make use of the time: I haven't opened my Facebook page in a week, but I feel no wish to escape into the profane world. The sluggish Moscow dawn is taking forever – not like in Cannes where the Sun rises from behind the mountain in 10 minutes. Finally, the dawn breaks, and in the bluish air I adjust for the spectrum shift, mix and in 20 minutes find the hues. I try a few strokes with each. Dammit! Not again! It turns out the shapes of colored forms are not in my head. Things stall once again.

I go to bed. Inshallah, later that day I’ll get at least one painting going. Next morning it's back to the daily grind. And the one after that…

Now you see that my interest in the kitchen is not gastronomic or abstract – it’s an abstractionist’s one. I’m there to steal a knife and to go to work with it.

Related themes

IskanGicleeCatalogueCatalogPersonal Catalog