It’s so crazy I’m doing a TED show.
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@tedxulb
#TEDx
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The lockdown made me forget just how serendipitous human interaction truly can be.
So many new and old friends have been able to reconnect in real life, in real time, in this real art show.
Post-pandemic life feels really special. Human interactions are more precious.
Yesterday, separately, two incredible women came into the gallery and I had the powerful feeling we have always been firm friends and will continue to grow and thrive in each other’s company.
One was photographer Corinna Robertson-Liersch whose parallel and mirroring existence as a glowing parent/artist/multilingual professional made me feel like shouting “HERE YOU ARE!” and the other was creative entrepreneur Vik Toria who also gave me goosebumps by identifying all the invisible threads woven into my paintings and sitting down to play “Nostalgia” to my art based on memory… I felt both seen and FOUND.
The pandemic made me forget how soul enriching new encounters can be, filled with possibility and meaning and I woke up grinning today.
I’m sure there’s a joke in there somewhere. Two rainbow unicorns walk through a pandemic into an art gallery… The colourful artist feels she’s always known but asks for the first time anyway… “Who are YOU?”…
Paintings in the video are from the IMMENSITIES collection on show at Art Base until Oct 10th 2020.
Art Base, 29 rue des Sables Zandstraat, 1000 Bruxelles
Culture show type news clip for my exhibition #IMMENSITIES: paintings of my travels through Greece & Belgium
Today & the next two weekends 2 – 6pm
Art Base, 29 rue des Sables Zandstraat, 1000 Bruxelles
It was challenging for me to share this video because I’m very details oriented and I don’t think the lighting shared the true colours of the paintings.
I hope I’m countering the negativity that’s always in the news by being in the press with positive paintings that people find uplifting.
Translation to English:
I Feel Like an Art Ambassador to Greece
Greece inspires my art.
Tropical beaches in Europe. Guaranteed good weather. Mountains, special architecture and sea. Greece is so beautiful.
My art inspires people to visit it.
I hosted a collector of works of art from Northern Europe at a private presentation of my exhibition, and while they were planning to buy a painting from Belgium, they ended up buying a painting from Greece! They then told me that the location I had painted – Naxos Island in particular – has become their first priority for their next vacation. This makes me proud of the beauty of my “adopted” country. It makes me feel like an art ambassador for Greece.
In addition to beauty
The paintings are not intended to be just aesthetically pleasing, there is still underlying philosophy, mythology, the cultural context.
My painting of Cape Tainaro changes, you might reflect on it more peacefully, when you know it is the mythological gateway to the underworld.
The Temple of Sounion of Poseidon seems more impressively ancient when you feel young compared to the age of the architecture.
The view of Meteora is a unique mix of cultural heritage and ancient geology.
My motivation is that I miss Greece
I named my exhibition IMMENSITIES. This is a collection of great landscapes of Greece and Belgium. Although my life between Greece and Belgium is a “permanent journey,” the boundaries are missing from this collection.
The art collector who came to buy a painting about Belgium, but ended up buying a painting from Greece, taught me that although there is a very personal journey for me here, with the presence of these two countries in my life, and my response, in terms of their beauty, as an aesthetic experience. And yet, even though the collector cannot travel outside the “Red Zone” of Belgium at the moment, they were inspired to visit Naxos. How much I miss Greece was “translated” through art as a source of inspiration into their enthusiasm to visit it.
The collection is presented in an exhibition entitled IMMENSITIES at the Art Base gallery in Brussels from 24 September 2020.
* Tamar Levi is a painter and author of children’s books She grew up in Alaska, lives in Belgium and has “married” into Greece – See more at https://tamarlevi.com/
by Tamar Levi
Greece Inspires My Art
Tropical beaches in Europe. Guaranteed good weather. Mountains, architecture and the sea. Greece is so beautiful.
My Art Inspires People to Visit
I was surprised: a North European art collector came to a private viewing of my solo show intending to buy a painting of Belgium but ended up buying a painting of Greece!
The art collector then told me that the location I had painted has become their top priority for their next holiday. This makes me feel proud of the beauty of my adopted country. This makes me excited for their first journey to the places that inspire me. It also makes me feel like an art ambassador for Greece.
Greece Has Hidden Beauty Too
The thing I want to share with some of this collection as a whole is that Greece is beautiful all over, not just the most famous sights.
The smaller gallery works travel far and wide and around hidden corners.
I have painted some popular destinations, but also lots of hidden parts of the mainland and islands and villages in colours you might not expect, from angles you might want to explore.
There are large paintings, one monoprint and even small sketches in watercolour and acrylic from my travel sketchbooks.
The monoprint was inspired by a series of watercolour sketches created during a deeply emotional journey to the Kalavryta monument.
There are even hidden nature landscapes in the city of Athens too!
For example, did you know there’s a very beautiful, peaceful and deserted part of Palio Psychiko in Athens?
It looks like mountains on the moon, but with secret, delicate wild flowers.
More Than Beauty
The paintings do not aim to be just aesthetically pleasing, there’s a philosophy and mythology and cultural context in them too.
I try to paint with longing and wonder. Ancient Greek Philosophy might say there’s an Aristotelian catharsis intentionally expressed through longing to return to these landscapes. Modern philosophers might say there’s an exploration of Kant’s concept of the sense of wonder for the sublime in nature.
My painting of the Temple at Cape Tenaron grows deeper and calmer when you know it’s the mythological gateway to the underworld.
The Temple of Sounio appears more childlike when you feel young compared to the age of the stones.
The view of Meteora is a globally unique mixture of cultural heritage and Paleogenic rock formations. Can you see the spectacular wild vegetation that houses comparatively miniature monasteries there too?
Me Missing Greece Becomes A Positive Gateway
My current solo show is called IMMENSITIES. It’s a collection of large landscapes of Greece and Belgium. Although living between Greece and Belgium is my current journey, the boundaries are not so present in this collection.
The art collector that came for Belgium but ended up buying Greece taught me there is a deeply personal journey of my encounter here, with these two nations’ presence in nature, and my response to their beauty as an aesthetic experience. However, they were both explored in a shared global pandemic and so in each canvas there is the shared need for passing through a gateway, whether it be painted, or over the frame, or beyond the water, and onwards into an expanding space in front of us. Even though the collector cannot travel out of our Red Zone for the moment, they have been inspired to visit.
How much I miss Greece has translated into inspiring her excitement to visit. This movement towards positive change is intentional. I hope that through all these bright colours, you can sense the optimism I’m trying to plaster on our walls. This is my political act: to counter the negativity of the news, the lockdowns, the temporal ruptures, with colourful movement across borderless canvases intended for regular positive uplift of your mood at home. The painting of Greece that will shine in their home will transport their family on holiday every day until they visit.
Then it will be the momento that came before the nostalgia that came after a trip to Greece.
Painting on the frame to create sculptural depth.
My original idea of painting on the frame aims to draw the viewer into the scene, in a sculptural way.
This provides the art collector with immediacy for hanging.
The bespoke frames provide deep dimensionality.
This allows the viewer to step into a scene. Another window for their home.
Most of these works are painted through the canvas and over the frame. I felt bad that art collectors often buy a work and then have to take it for framing.
If I can provide them with a ready-to-hang piece of art, I save them that extra time and expense.
To prepare for this collection I hunted for the biggest and most beautiful antique frames from markets and auction houses in Athens, Greece and Brussels, Belgium. Then I affixed and painted both canvases and frame simultaneously.
I have not perfected the method but so far I’m told it’s both helpful and delightful. What more can I offer?
Turning Outwards
The large size of the canvas is significant. It offers you more space for your inner life.
There is a proclivity to turn inward when there is a global pandemic, but I want these paintings to remind the viewer of the spiritual release we receive when engaging with wide views of majestic nature.
The orientation is not just physical, it’s a psychological direction too. These are landscapes that inspire the sublime.
Kant’s philosophy of aesthetics involves the idea that a small human form as audience to a vast largeness will give us a sublime experience of nature. This is an almost spiritual release, like the gasp when you see a brilliant view.
Until recently I illustrated children’s books with big ideas, such as philosophy and theoretical mathematics, these were big in another sense. The title of this collection, Immensities, speaks to the broad horizons in these paintings, but it is also the far reaches of your mind. The Immensity of how your soul expands when you stand on these cliff tops or at the heart of these lush forests.
Choosing the Correct Outlook
Of course, one must choose angles of certain landscapes that first offer that sense of space. Only then a good initial sketch on location can provide the best possible opening of the shapes to make one feel the freedom of that sense of place. Travel memories and sketchbooks are brought back to the studio. In this case, my studio was my home during lockdown.
Optical Illusion
When you look at visual culture online you don’t think about the scale. Scale matters. If it encompasses you in real life, if it is bigger than real life, you enter the scene more deeply. You are smaller than the canvas. You are a child. In that way, your childlike wonder is more instantly stimulated.
I noticed the big ones made me afraid. Am I afraid to take up space? Am I afraid of bigger, more visible mistakes? Whatever the case, the larger canvases were necessary to achieve the goal: a nearly fish-eye lens viewpoint expressed on larger canvases is designed to provide a sense of perspective. These vistas are an offering for expansion, travel opportunities not lost, but to be found, again and again.
Different Directions
There are different walks you can take into these landscapes. In my last continuous line illustrated series I “took a line for a walk,” and in this one your eye can take a journey down different paths.
Although I visited these landscapes with my sketchbook in freer times, I painted this whole series, ironically, under the world’s first lockdown. It is the first time in the history of civilisation that all recreational activities were cancelled and we were prohibited to travel. As a family we were respecting the safety precautions and so it was with a sense of grief that I became an artist in residence in my own home and my art expressed the wider world. I painted with love the wild bluebells of Hallerbos forest during the time of year that those bluebells bloom. I recalled our joy in discovering that cool and shadowy woods with its bright points of violet where the bluebells carpeted the clearing and I painted it knowing I could not visit this year. So it was with a sense of longing and grief that I travelled those landscapes again in my heart and in my art, but they are intended as a gift to the flat walls of collector’s homes, deeply shapely and opening and widening the views you might or might not have from your windows, and allowing another scene to open up another view for you.
Painting Positivity
I hope the shapes appear spontaneous at first glance and give a gasping sense of space but then, if you’d like to look closer you might notice a thoughtful layering of light and carefully composed colours that builds up a sense of positivity and imbues warmth.
I was surprised: a North European art collector came to view the works of Belgium but ended up buying a very specific painting of Greece. It made me realise that although living between Greece and Belgium is my journey, the boundaries are not so present in this collection. There is a deeply personal journey of my encounter with these two nations’ presence in nature, as an aesthetic experience. However, they were explored in a shared global pandemic and so in each canvas there is the shared need for passing through a gateway, whether it be painted, or over the frame, or beyond the water, and onwards into an expanding space in front of us. This movement towards positive change is intentional: I hope you can sense the optimism I’m trying to plaster on our walls. This is my political act: to counter the negativity of the news with the colourful movement across canvases intended for regular positive uplift of your mood at home.
This collection will be exhibited in a solo show titled IMMENSITIES at Art Base gallery from the 24th of September 2020.
Now, thanks to this global pandemic, now we know having a view is nearly essential. We finally understand that if we do not have picture windows, then landscape art can open up our small rooms and turn house arrest into a home sanctuary.
These works were painting from memory during lockdown. They are my response to the feeling of being in closed quarters: painting widening vistas across the canvas.
What techniques did I choose to create a sense of more space?
Click on the links below for more description.
Landscapes that make more space in your head & home.
Colour mixing & texture to encourage dynamic eye movement.
Painting on the frame to create sculptural depth.
This collection will be exhibited in a solo show titled IMMENSITIES at Art Base gallery from the 24th of September 2020.
