St. John the Baptist was painted by Leonardo da Vinci from 1513 to 1516, it is believed to be his last painting. It is an oil painting on walnut wood. The original size of the work was 69x57 cm. It is now exhibited at the Musée du Louvre in Paris, France.
I love this painting so much I have decided to make homage to Leonardo da Vinci for the exhibition on caste Snežnik by taking his painting as an inspiration for a portrait of Archangel Michael.
The story began long ago. The first sketch was made in 2016.
The first painting was made with tempera on wood in 2017.
But I wanted to paint him in the sfumato technique, just like Leonardo da Vinci did. On walnut wood in the original size of the work 69x57 cm.
I have made 128 thin layers of colour and silver dust to get the final image.
I have created in various media: painting, sculpture, installation, performance, conceptual projects, photography, interior design, graphic design and illustration. On my the professional path of a visual artist, I have always been disturbed by the fact of the objectivity of visual language and its connection with the deepest human desire to communicate. After many years of intensive and in-depth research, I realized my medium can be everything I can use for narration, with which I arose in the people exact feeling I want - only clear visual communication is important. For the past seven years, I have returned to the roots of my artistic education, to my original love - painting.
I paint in the manner of the old masters who called themselves illuminators, as they illuminated reality and wanted to bring light to people through a visual language. Clarity and light lead me in the path of understanding painting and, consequently, all other media as well as life itself. Painting for me is not only the application of colour surfaces on the base but the research of a deeper understanding of life itself. In order to discover the unique technique of painting with light, I have studied and explored the field of mythology and symbolism, psychology, philosophy, physics, quantum physics, mathematics, chemistry, various techniques and methods of human consciousness and perception. It was the desire to understand the connection between everything that existed, which led me to Leonardo da Vinci.
I studied the sfumato technique at the time of studies, from 1994 to 2000, at the Ljubljana ALUO. In 2009, after a groundbreaking event and after nine years of pause, I started to paint again and in 2012 I painted the picture "Contemporary Mona Lisa". With this picture, my journey to the world of painting began, through the unknown dimensions of the discovery and rendering of reality. The works and notes of the great master da Vinci have always opened the door to new worlds and tell me the story behind them. I followed his way of exploring life - I began to look for the essence, the cause of the phenomenon, in every way. In each of my actions, I tried to understand what is a hidden cause which creates the world around us as it is. Leonardo always said that nature was his greatest teacher and spent most of his time observing nature and natural phenomena; he studied the flight of birds, watched the extremes in nature and in man, observed clouds, nebulae, mists and reflections of light, he studied painting techniques, and thus he tried to understand the appearance of the world and what is hidden in it. He wrote this: "It's not enough to believe what you see. What you see, you have to understand too."
This kind of work meant a leap in my approach to creation, from which I realize that in spite of all the knowledge I gained during my studies and later from various theories, I do not know anything at all. There were questions and dilemmas that I did not find answers in books. I had to redefine my beliefs about what colour is, to discover what is a true visual language, and to make sure of the illusory value of the image, to understand the importance of mastering the technique and material and to develop the feeling of my body and hand in order to be able to create images that I saw in my visions.
The basis of my research was Leonardo's painting method - sfumato, which in Italian means smoke, veil. It is a technique of applying thin layers of paint, in which the materiality of the paint is completely lost and the image of the form comes to life. After seven years of intensive work, observing Leonardo's paintings and exploring his notes, in order to understand what he was doing and how, I managed to paint a picture that reflects such a vibrancy, softness and grace that pervades Leonardo's paintings. I can claim now that I do not only fully understand his process, but I also started to upgrade it.
The way of painting I have developed is unique throughout the world acquired in practice, I have been constantly checking in various theoretical areas. I found that they wrote about it in the Vedic scripts, written by the alchemists, that this is the knowledge Pythagoras, Goethe, Tesla and many others had transmitted. I realized that reality is completely different from what I was convinced before. Leonardo Da Vinci's work slowly and with certainty lead me, through observation and conscious attendance, to a true understanding. Just as he wrote: "The brain is a fantastic organ, you only have to use it."
Each image begins with the study of the relationship between content and composition. Relationships within the image between individual elements, diagonals, accents, empty spaces, ... everything must be in a ratio that takes into account the primary language of geometry and numbers. It is not the same thing if the image is 70 cm wide or 66 cm wide. The difference seems unimportant, but these few centimetres change the image's feelings and consequently understanding of the message. The basis is simple Pythagorean geometry. Behind all is a language of numbers. This is the most abstract language that a human knows and is ahead of any other communication. Numbers and geometry create the melody of an image that affects our senses and tells a story that is preliminary to an image. It is not just a golden ratio or a Fibonacci sequence that are important, but a form of science, which we call today the sacred geometry, which was common to all the ancient civilizations, whether it be shamanic knowledge of Siberia, the legacy of the civilizations of South America or ancient Egypt. The sacred geometry is the basis of all the artefacts that arose before the written word, from the times when the basic language of recording the knowledge was still an image.
The next stage is the choice of colours and the way they are interchanged. I usually use combinations of seven basic tones - the colours I discovered during the study of old Babylonian records, which have survived to this day in the fragments of Plato's and Goethe's works and in some other medieval scripts from all over the world. My painting technique is painting with light, so it is especially important for me that the colours I use are of high quality and that the pigment is well grounded. I needed a little time to discover the medium that suits me. Since the colour and its vibration is important and I work with it at the level of the atomic structure, the color tube is not only a white tube but always a specific shade of white, which has exactly fine particles of the pigment, a precisely determined binder and solvent content, and a specific drying time, which is different for each layer of colour. White is not only white, but every pigment is different, depending on the substance from which it is made, the age of pigment production ... and it depends on the medium, from the one that applies the colour. Colour becomes understandable only when perceived as vibration within the atom. Thus, titanium white is not the same as zinc white, because the titanium atom vibrates in the same vibration as the number five, and the zinc atom is at the level of nine. In addition, each image contains 60 to 200 thin paint coatings that intertwine each other and generate final vibration. The colours I apply are carefully selected according to their primary vibration. Equally important is the sequence of colour tones.
After that comes the way to apply colours. It is different for each picture, as my movement affects the final message and the image's sensing. Once I've fixed all this, I can start painting.
It's only in the last two years that I started to understand how everything works together, which allows me to play with the essence - with the light and darkness and everything that exists between them. Leonardo da Vinci has incorporated into his paintings his knowledge of the world surrounding us, the anatomy and laws of the occurrence of things, the color, the composition, the way the colour is applied and, most importantly, the relationship between light and darkness as a primordial duality which helps people to orient themselves in the world, get to know it and understand it. He did not use the elementary principle of duality only to achieve the reality of the image but spread it to all levels of visual language. It is hidden in its method of applying colour, in the composition, in the choice of colours, in patterns on clothes, in the way he portrayed nature, and in the sensing of the depicted. It was only when I understood that his secret, I understood why people in his paintings fell so realistically and at the same time they give a feeling as if they were coming from another world. First of all, this is the consequence of the sfumato, which makes everything seemed as if we are looking through veils of softness. This is because such a way of applying the colour particles to the surface actively cooperates with our eye and consequently encourages the visual centre in the brain to increase activity. It can be said that this method stimulates the natural functioning of our visible apparatus, as it keeps it in the game between the focus in the centre and the surrounding area that is blurred. It's natural for our eyes, of course. Many painters used the same technique and their paintings were infused with light, but not in the same manner. Their light is the earth's light, the visible world of duality, while the images of Leonardo Da Vinci are wrapped in soft illumination.
When I understood this, I could continue where Leonardo ended up. Just like him, I begin to create an image so that I first set up dark parts and then I apply colours and all the time I'm looking for the light inside them, and not outside them. Just like he, I am painting in the opposite direction than other painters. Instead of applying light or darker shades, generated by an external source of light, I draw their internal irradiation from the forms, their interior light. I paint by removing material from the material and replacing it with light that lies within the atom. This is possible because of the understanding of the higher level of the appearance of matter and the vibration of the colour. What is the difference between these two principles of the colour coating? It is best understood through the principles of colour mixing. First is of subtractive mixing of colour materials and second the additive mixing of coloured light. In the case of coloured substances, blending with red, blue and yellow is obtained in black. On the contrary, the yellow and purple light are subtracted from each other so that we get white light. It is impossible to hear, but if everything is only the result of light, then everything is light. Leonardo understood that at a certain level of life there are no colour substances. And just as he did I am actually only cleaning the surface of my pictures, until I get the cleanest vibration - the original vibration.
Video- work in process:
https://youtu.be/SXDEy5rIem0
