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.
Tamar Levi’s painting of Naxos Island, imagined from beyond the Temple of Aphrodite, Greece, 2020, IMMENSITIES Collection
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.
Tamar Levi’s Painting of the Temple of Poseidon at Sounio, Greece, 2020, IMMENSITIES Collection
The view of Meteora is a unique mix of cultural heritage and ancient geology.
Tamar Levi’s Painting of Meteora, Greece, 2020, IMMENSITIES Collection
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/
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?
Colour Mixing & Texture to encourage dynamic eye movement.
Inspiration and energy came from artists I respect; the bespoke palette and mixed media of Andy Dixon, the bright textures of the Impressionists and Van Gogh and the Fauvist’s wild use of colour.
There are many ways in which the pandemic came into these landscapes: close quarters, disruption, questioning the value of my shared time, holding space for studio time, working with uneven light.
Colour Mixing
As a true artist in (imperfect) residence, I then developed a self-tailored colour palette that I worked hard to create myself through long colour mixing theory research and colour mixing practice sessions.
Cohesion in the Collection
All this so the cohesion carries from canvas to canvas across the collection. Even as I make these pieces I’m thinking about how they speak to each other and how we are going to install it. I was thinking about the Art Base gallery where the solo show would take place and considered how the pieces will sit best in the space. The goal here is that the audience stands in the gallery and receives a fully peripheral experience. The movement in each painting will draw the audience from one travel experience across to another, with salon style smaller paintings grouped at the back and no boundaries between them. Finally, the way I painted over the frame creates a sculptural depth that lends itself to getting lost inside these views.
Light to Dark then Dark to Light Again
If you come to examine the artwork even closer you might note the light to dark and then dark to light again order in which the paint is layered. This is the first time I’m working on canvases spray-painted with solid colours. I’m very driven by the shaping in Ori Reisman’s landscapes.
Although I don’t explore a human form in the earth as Reisman does, I aim to work the shaping of the land in a similar way that inspires a similarly human interaction, even though it’s not intended to be a human-sized view.
This is me trying to expand my skillset, widening my canvas, practicing grander sweeps, expanding what I can do and bringing you to the precipice with me and you can extrapolate from that what it means to you to stand in immense spaces.
Paint Texture
Childlike Innocence in Mixed Media
Due to the close quarters, I’ve been painting next to my 3 year old. She has influenced me. I mixed my use of acrylic paints and oil pastel to create a dynamic forward and backward motion of the viewer’s eye: from the background acrylic to the foreground pastel, we move through the scene.
Thanks to my daughter, I was inspired to replicate form with a childlike sense in the brushstrokes. For example, I thought very deeply about the innocence I wanted to convey in the form of the Temple on Sounio. There is an innocence in one’s experience of wonder when one encounters ancient monuments. It makes you feel small to see the history. I hope that textural peculiarity, the quirkiness in the lines and colours I chose, wakes up the dull feelings of ordinary scenes and gets the viewer excited about the unique vision we get when standing in the inspiring spiritual locations ancient people appreciated for the same reason.
Tidal & Air Movement in Space & Paint Speed
I thought a lot about texture because it offers something we don’t get from our screens. Paintings need to offer something more than what we get in the visual world of our screens. I asked: What do paintings do that screens cannot? I answered: The texture of the paint and the peripheral size of the canvas can outsize our peripheral experience and let us step outside ourselves, deeply experience the movement of the wind and air and leaves and water and receive that specificity of human perspective in a vast space.
Even if you are not familiar with these locations, from our travels in Greece and Belgium, even if you have not stood in the same spaces, I hope you agree, you feel a sense of space, feel their particular quality of light and catch a breath of the same air.
Gloss Varnish
The gloss varnish was also an important element. Products made by machines can make a smooth perfect flat surface. An impeccable glossy flat surface cam be made by the digital world. I asked: What can paintings do that cannot be done by photography or a computer or a machine? I answered: Dynamic texture that follows the shapes of the image and brings an overall sense of sculptural harmony to the piece. This is unique to painting and that’s why I do NOT try to apply the varnish as flat as possible across the surface of the canvas, but instead follow the movements of the painting’s forms and express the speed of emotive brushstrokes even with the varnish itself.
By shaping the solid forms with the paint texture, using mixed media to bring in a dynamic movement forward and backwards from the surface of the canvas, flowing the brush strokes to mimic tidal or hot air shafts away and around the nearly fish-eye lens enlargements of the horizon, I am working to enlarge one’s sense of space.
Educated in London and Cambridge, Tamar has published as an author, illustrator and editor of multiple award-wining books designed for families, classrooms and doctors. Her prized artwork is highly collectible, commissioned by private collectors, sold at private auctions and exhibited in galleries around Europe.
