An in-depth study of art history, followed by a trip to Europe was the inspiration for this particular series of paintings. The Old Masters series blends images of Renaissance and Baroque art history – particularly anatomical passages from paintings and sculptures – with contemporary references. This work was created following an experimental phase of art for me at university and it combines drawing, painting, sculpture and collage.

In A Tourist In St. Peter’s, I was specifically interested in the act of vandalism on Michelangelo’s Pietà that took place in 1972. A Hungarian-born geologist, later committed to a psychiatric hospital, climbed a guardrail and struck the vulnerable statue several times with a hammer. More than fifty shards of marble would be collected and carefully re-attached.

Some were discovered in nearby wax candle drippings and others were returned to the Vatican by tourists who had collected them as souvenirs. X-rays revealed that the original left hand of Mary was restored by an eighteenth century sculptor. All of this contributed to the idea of ‘fragmentation’ and ‘dislocation’ that, in conjunction with my own first-hand experience viewing the masterpiece, would be incorporated in this small series of shelves.

I superimposed acrylic renderings of the hands from the Pietà over maps of various locales from around the globe. These maps, mounted on four wooden shelves, became an integral part of the paintings; the highways and rivers revealed between the dry-brushed shadows create interesting textural details not otherwise achieved. This effect, which could be interpreted as tiny fractures in marble or blood vessels in a medical illustration, was not something I planned but certainly was a welcomed accident.

Each shelf supports four stained plaster casts that include fragments of a car ignition, an electrical outlet, a camera lens and other oft-handled bits of modern technology (ironically, many of these 'modern' casts look dated and obsolete today as they were cast from objects of twenty year old technology). Each hand is oriented in such a way as to correspond to one of the four directions of the compass.

In Blue Divide, I explore a similar theme of dissection. In the top panel, a passage from a Rembrandt portrait (Agatha Bas) is painted over a collage of torn paper and then mounted on wood. The two contrasting techniques are reconciled by a numbered grid. This grid provides the structure for the collage and recalls twentieth century geometric abstraction; it also makes reference to a method often used by old masters to easily transfer a small-scaled sketch to a much larger mural-sized surface.

Immediately below is another wood-mounted collage based on a butcher’s chart of beef cuts. The limbless flank of beef stands in stark contrast to the fan and jewels of the dainty aristocratic hand above. Although the two panels are physically separate, they are connected by two variations of a functional grid. Additionally, both panels depict subjects painted by Rembrandt with great reverence during two distinctly different periods of his artistic career.

-- Steve Volpe