Tammuz
Oil on linen on MDF
88x88mm
$120
sold
This one was painted during the same session as the Dead Leaf. I have grown particularly fond of the pigment Nickel Titanate recently. It is a yellow colour. Normally I tend to use the cadmium yellows and at first I didn't like the nickel titanate at all. It always takes a while to appretiate a pigments intinsic qualities. Compared to all the other yellow pigments available to artists, it seems to be relatively opaque, and I find myself almost using it like a white pigment to mix tints with other colours. For the pale green background of these recent paintings (which is in fact a small sheet of note paper), I am mixing the titanate yellow with green earth, another subtle pigment I once could see no use for.
As for the subject, I deliberately aranged these matches in the form of a cross. Many people will view this as a strongly Christian religous symbol, but like many other Christian symbols it is a lot older than Christianity.The Babylonians had a god called Tammuz and the cross, in the form of the initial "Tou" or our "T", was a natural association. He was seen as a life/death/rebirth diety. All my painting is largely autobiographical in nature and I do seem to have this theme of the
transition between life and death a lot on my mind lately.
