At a distance, the bases of the trees are recognizable. Yet, each small section of the piece takes on its own life.
“You can find sections in many of these landscapes that make interesting abstract paintings on their own,” Lazarus said.
And he isn’t afraid to reuse a canvas.
“There is a certain irreverence I have for the canvas,” he said. It’s not an issue as long as he’s laying thick paint over thin paint underneath, he said.
He likes the lack of certainty – the vagueness – in his more abstracted landscapes, he said.
“I value my mud very highly,” Lazarus said of his palette.
Where he once painted plein air landscapes, or worked from a photo, Lazarus now works from sketches he records in a pocket-sized notebook he keeps with him at all times. On the colorless sketches, he’ll write a description, something like “Strangely Red Barn.”
Many times, Lazarus will not stay true to the original images’ colors.
With a depiction of the concrete landing blocks at the Steamship Authority as seen from the Easy Street basin, Lazarus painted a sky and a sea of red tones.
“The license we have with color is infinite,” he said.
Though he supported himself for years doing painstakingly detailed scrimshaw work, Lazarus has moved away from the ivory based work, partly because of the toll it takes on his eyes.
His studio is strewn with old dry point prints and wood-engraved prints that he used to illustrate scenes from Nat Philbrick’s book, “In the Heart of the Sea.”
“My painting language is a much broader language than my printing,” he said, “but I love them both.
In the weeks before his show at South Wharf, Lazarus is elbow deep in oil paints. And, as he tells his students, his best work comes when he is without self-consciousness.
With a certain mindfulness, painting becomes a natural process, he said, and a process full o beautiful surprises.
“Things happen almost by themselves,” he said. And, nearing his exhibition, Lazarus paints are running low, so he ends up squeezing the remnants out of old tubes of paint, and in turn, produces color combinations on the canvas he might not have fund otherwise, he said.
Aside from the island landscapes, Lazarus finds inspiration in his painting from his six-year-old daughter, Blake.
Blake has what Lazarus’ feels some photo realists may have lost – a childlike, painterly sense of the canvas – the ability to have fun.
Lazarus’ works in oil go on display Friday with an opening reception at South Wharf Gallery on Old South Wharf starting at 6 p.m.
Reach Joel Silverstein at jsilverstein@inkym.com |
