Homage to Nicholas Roerich.

                       Homage to Nicholas Roerich.  2009.  Prismacolor and shell gold on sanded paper.

    I made this picture and frame based on a vision I had in 2009.  I don't remember exactly what I was doing at the time, but all of a sudden, I had a very clear vision of a red cube-like house on a hill surrounded by a large, heavy, dark frame.  

    For this picture, I wanted a luminosity similar to Japanese Mineral Pigment, but wanted to achieve it in another way.  My solution was to use colored pencil, Prismacolor, on sanded paper.  Sanded paper has a coarse texture that lends itself very nicely to pastel and colored pencil.  By using a sanded surface, I can apply many layers of pencil and achieve color effects not possible with ordinary smooth stock.

    The vision was of a glowing red structure on a high, dark hill with a brilliant, limitless sky behind.  In my vision, the structure had a golden door reflecting the light of the sun.  To achieve this effect, I used something called shell gold.

    Shell gold is a watercolor made with genuine powdered gold mixed with gum arabic.  It comes in what are known as half pans and has quite a dramatic effect when used sparingly in painting.

    For the frame, I chose various pieces of wood from my shop and combined them to achieve the desired effect.  For a finish, I attempted to duplicate something I had often seen in the Orient - a very dark, almost black color with deep red overtones.  I achieved this by first painting the frame black, then applying a layer of dark red followed by another thin layer of black.  Once everything had dried, I used steel wool to very carefully sand through the black to reveal areas of red.  This ancient-looking heavy frame became the perfect support for my new painting.

    Once the painting was finished, I hung it on the wall so that I could take a good long look at it, but the more I looked at it, the more I wondered;  Where did this come from?  I looked at this piece everyday for more than a year and still could not understand it's origins.  Then one day, just like the original vision, it came to me in  flash -  Nicholas Roerich!

    In 1991, I had a show of my paintings in the Nicholas Roerich Museum in New York City.  During the month long show, I spent a lot of time looking at and thinking about the many Roerich paintings there.  Roerich was a Russian Painter, Philosopher, explorer and peace activist who later in his life moved to the Kullu Valley in india between the Lower Himalayan and Great Himalayan ranges.  It is one of the most picturesque places on the earth with verdant valleys surrounded by magnificent snow-capped mountains.  What really sets the place off is the quality of the light from that limitless brilliant sky.

    Roerich painted a great many images of the area and all of them are suffused with this wonderful brilliant light.  Anyone who has been to the desert or to very high mountain peaks will understand the quality of this light.  My picture was an homage to Nicholas Roerich delayed by almost 30 years.

    Somehow, my experience of looking at the Roerich paintings just popped out after all this time, but now that I understand the origins, it is easy for me to see that the picture is all about that high mountain light and the red structure is something akin to a temple dedicated to the spirit of such places.  As an artist, I am influenced by everything that I see in this world and it comes out in my paintings.  In this case, it came out many years after the fact, but now I have a picture I call "Homage to Nicholas Roerich."

    If you would like to see works by Mr. Roerich, you can Google Nicholas Roerich Museum.  Once there you can read his biography and browse the collection.  Thanks for listening.  Patrick, AKA Potlick