I chose to display Didi Menendez’ painting of Diego Keros a few days ago for the sole purpose of writing about it at a later time. Now is that time.
I have read many of Diego’s poems since I started working with the Mipoesias poetry workshop in March. And I have viewed all of his paintings posted on his web-page. (If you get a chance, you must check out his latest oil painting titled Eve, over on his blog, here and here.)
Other than this, my reading is based on Didi’s interpretation of him, as it should be.
Having said this, Didi’s impressionistic portrait of Diego Keros is captivating. I find her use of color masterful, especially in regards to how it adds texture and character to his face and hair. Impressionism is exactly this, the art of showcasing impressions–adding metaphor to what’s visual.
Spend some time viewing Didi’s portraits and you’ll see a great love for color, especially the use of neon colors in highlights, backgrounds, or for ornament sake. In Diego Keros, for example, notice the use of varying and vibrant blues in the locks of hair falling about his neck. The mastery in this is that these colors help move your eyes off of his face.
A good friend and mentor told me that good paintings have entrances and exits within them, that move you from one point of a painting to another. You’re never stuck at one spot. The variegated blues of Diego’s hair accomplish this effect– they move your eyes up the contour of his face and to the top of the portrait.
Indeed, Didi employs many circular elements throughout the painting that allow your eye to move without falling idle–the eyebrows, shadows under the eyebrows, and goatee, for example.
However, I feel the absolute strength of the painting is the interpretive aspect of it, the symbolism she consciously or unconsciously adds.
For example, I love the mobius-like effect of using varying colors and texture to each side of his face, giving the impression of two opposing souls melded together. It’s a method familiar in Picasso’s paintings. Another example of the mobius is Didi’s use of yellow and black in the background--the sun seems to set on the right side of his face, with a vibrant color of yellow-glory and night seems to hang about his left side like an ominous shadow he cannot shake.
I also want to point out the amazing goatee. Didi has painted the hairless space in the goatee the shape of a wide-mouthed wine glass. But notice how Diego’s lower lip seems to be the wine in the glass. I venture to say that this was probably not planned, but it definitely adds an amazing metaphoric touch to it.
What most impresses me about this painting however are the eyes, pointedly, the emotion emitted from the eyes.
If the characteristic of grace was ever depicted, Menendez successfully painted it here in these brown eyes that peer out through eyelids she colored cerulean blue, like the color of a mid-afternoon summer sky. We really cannot help but linger under these cool, shaded canopies, staring at the assured soul stirring behind them. I dare say we are drawn to these eyes like pilgrims drawn to the image of the weeping saint in the face of a tree, or like tourists captivated by the kind eyes of Rembrandt’s Christ, in whose gaze grants us rest and is gentle as if Christ were always in the act of watching Mary anoint his feet with olive oil, wiping away the excess with her own hair that she has uncovered. Yes, that is where I have seen these eyes, in Rembrandt’s Christ.
Not only are they kind and gentle, but they seem to have a deep sadness to them as well. Ironically, Rembrandt’s Christ has this same look in them. And it was this point that reminded me of the French philosopher/theologian Blaise Pascal, who wrote in "The Mystery of Christ," from the book of collected works titled The Pensee, that part of Christ’s suffering was loneliness.
Jesus is alone on earth, not merely with no one to feel and share his agony, but with no one even to know of it. Heaven and he are the only ones to know.
Knowing Diego’s independence from his family since the very young age of ten might account for this look. (On this interpretation, I may very well be stretching.)
Lastly, and more fitting, this portrait also seems to be the image of passion’s prophet. Can you see it, in the darker eye on the right side? Crawling out of the needle of that eye, onto the cheek that has the texture of a desert landscape, he’ll search like a prophet for the remaining angels, the Valkyries he has yet to know. He’ll trick them by carving their divine magic symbols in ancient rock; hide behind a burning bush they’ll assume to be God. And once he’s captured them, he’ll spread their wings that span a sky, comfort their fears till the wild desert flowers bloom, and shake their foundations till they drop their wings; plead to be human.
This is the interpretation of Menendez’ portrait of Diego Keros.
*****
For comparison’s to Rembrandt’s Christ, see here and here.
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