Michelangelo Buonarroti Study I, 2015-19

oil, alkyd resin and linseed oil on canvas

60 x 60 x 2 inches / 152.5 x 152.5 x 5 cm 

SOLD

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni has been–since childhood–one of my favorite and possibly the most influential presence in the development of my career as an artist. This influence is not necessarily directly nor obviously visible, but his enlightened perception, his unwavering hand coupled with perspicacious vision, his practiced inquiries in the language of drawing and the resolute commitment to absolutely everything he undertook has had more than a significant impact.

When I was a student at Otis I drew from reproductions of his work constantly and 40 years later, when traveling throughout Italy I shuffled my husband to obscure churches, museums and palazzos to see every Michelangelo we could locate—his drawings, sculptures, paintings and architecture. I have held his drawings in my hands, marveled at them for untold hours, drawn from his sculptures, wandered unhurried through buildings he designed in Florence and Rome, read about his life and immersed myself in his work and genius.

I have used various Michelangelo drawings as the source, anchor and under-painting for many of the paintings in this body of work: Ignudo studies, drawings from the walls of the New Sacristy in the Medici Chapel (a secret hidden room re-discovered in the late 20th century), the Raising of Lazarus, numerous portraits, and on... Some have been appropriated for their outdated conceptual themes, some for their oblique relationships to other mythologies (as in the Theseus and the Minotaur paintings) and some—for their sheer artistic brilliance. Michelangelo is, and always will be, a transcendent human being and his work a continual and eminently guiding muse.

—Lawrence Fodor