The Quiet Man, Ink Drawing by Ed Tajchman

For a year or so in the late 90's I worked as an overnight care-giver in group homes for the mentally challenged. I was the rotation sub, which meant I went to whatever house the company wanted me at for that night or week or whatever. I took care of 3 - 8 (depending on the house) severely to moderately mentally disabled people. By myself. Every night. My point is that it was a very hard job to do. Not on a physical level but on an emotional and mental stress kind of level. It takes a special person to do that kind of job well. 

Anyways, here is a kind-of portrait of one of the men in one of the houses, that I took care of. He was very thin, very quiet, very gentle. For some reason his demeanor and face always kind of stuck with me. There were many people in various stages and levels of mental illness that I came in contact with during this time. Which, for a young man like I was, was quite the learning experience. Maybe like Ken Kesey working at a mental hospital and writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, ( but not that severe.) 

"Quiet Man" by Ed Tajchman. Ink drawing. 2013 ©.

After a while of working with the mentally ill/disabled, one can get to know the individuals on a more personal level & it is a really great thing. So many interesting people that are usually written off by society. If I had not worked for this company, I never would have had this experience myself. I started to understand the people behind all the stutters, ticks, seizures, and various mental, physical disabilities. I started to understand their personalities, getting to know them like you would anyone else. It was a great opportunity and I learned a lot. Alas I can admit I was not emotionally and mentally ready for that kind of job when I was 19 years old, and only lasted about a year before moving on to other means of employment. But I will never forget the people I took care of during that time.

Edvard Munch on Anxiety as Inspiration

Edvard Munch, like French painter Paul Cezanne was imbued with an intense passion for life that also had a darker side. This intense personality is reflected in his yearning to create works that were passionate, not mere droll subject matter. His expressionistic, dark, and unique style was not only radical but very influential. The underlying emotion so prominent in his work is also reflected in this quote from Munch:

"My whole life has been spent walking by the side of a bottomless chasm, jumping from stone to stone. Somtimes I try to leave my narrow path and join the swirling mainstream of life, but I always find myself drawn inexorably back towards the chasm's edge, and there I shall walk until the day I finally fall into the abyss. For as long as I can remember I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to express in my art. Without anxiety and illness I should have been like a ship without a rudder."

-Edvard Munch (1863 -1944)

Edvard Munch 'Self-Portrait' 1882

Salvador Dali on Portraits

The enormous ego that Dali had concerning himself, his work, and his personal style, is no secret of course. I think if Dali could have convinced subjects to somehow more resemble their portraits he absolutely would have.

"The reason that some portraits don't look true to life is that some people make no effort to resemble their pictures."

-Salvador Dali

Thank Goddess Dali never had this power, else we would have some very unnaturally strange people walking around, (which might be fun for us, but certainly not for the person themselves). Looking back at Dali's life and work; I find his enormous ego funny and endearing at times, other times it is simply overbearing and distracts from his paintings. As I have said in my other quotes from Dali, my humble opinion is that I don't think surrealism (the movement Dali helped pioneer) was at the forefront of modern art. I am much more a Duchamp fan myself, and wonder what kind of work Dali would have done had he been a tad more conceptual. Let's not forget though that surrealism gave us in many ways what is an unmatched contribution to the world that is still reverberating, an unparalleled commitment to the imagination, and for that I am forever grateful.

Edvard Munch on Color, Line, and Form

Norwegian artist Edvard Munch was stylistically ahead of his time. He was a print-maker, a symbolist painter, and an influence in the development of German Expressionism, a style I feel especially drawn towards. I love the following quote, because emphasis on line and vibration or flow of those lines (for lack of better words) are elements I use in my work.

"By painting colors and lines and forms seen in quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does. "

-Edvard Munch (1863 -1944)

I like the way he used color and line forms to define moods in his work. It's easy to call someone like French painter Henri Matisse (1869 - 1954) a forefather of modern art, but Munch played a prime and vital role in that development also. The self-portrait below is a prime example; you will be hard pressed to find a painting from 1895 with that much expressionistic color, texture, and overall mysterious feel.

Edvard Munch, Self Portrait with Cigarette, 1895

Paul Gauguin on Color

Very well said and very true words from Gauguin in the following quote:

"There are tonalities which are noble and others which are vulgar, harmonies which are calm or consoling, and others which are exciting because of their boldness. "

-Paul Gauguin

His painting below I think is a good example. One thing I find interesting about it is the contrast between the two different yellows used for the flowers and the background behind them. Also, the contrast between the yellow and red obviously is kind of disturbing, or bold to say the least. A nice grassy green in the apples and leaves is kind of offset by the flesh tone. From the contrast between the halo and the snake in his hand, to the symbolism of the apples, to the flowers and his portrait blooming from them, a lot of things could be said on the theme of the work. But I'll leave that for you to decide. For 1889 or anytime, it is a very interesting painting.

Gauguin - Self-portrait with Halo, 1889 Oil on wood.

Van Gogh On His Portraits

This quote from Van Gogh is more than a hundred years old, so now we can say that his wish came true:

"I would like to make portraits that people a hundred years on will see as apparitions."

(-Vincent Van Gogh, quoted in; p.183, Van Gogh by Pierre Cabanne.)

His subjects do seem like ghosts staring at you through the depths of time. He captured a vibrancy not only in nature, but in the people he painted also. Especially in his self-portraits, he captured that sense of viewing apparitions as he says. (I am not sure that's what he meant in the preceding quote, but it's true.)