Interview with Claudio D’Angelo – Fall Fox

1) Your painting, “Fall Fox”, appears to combine both fine brush strokes with broad strokes without compromising the work’s stylistic unity; how is such a unity achieved?

As far as how I maintain a unity within the painting by combining fine and bolder brush strokes, I’d have to say that first, I have no preset formula that I can reach for that will achieve this every time. I rely on what instinctively feels and looks right above all. When discussing brush strokes we are essentially talking about the textures of the various elements in a painting. I have found that using the right kind of stroke (soft, bold, scumbled, etc…), especially at the edges of a subject, to describe the texture, is far more effective and economical than to fastidiously render all textures using fine brushstrokes. Our eyes see a wide array of things in nature and without having to touch them, our eyes can tell us a lot about their textures. So as we look upon a scene of a fox atop a fallen tree our mind, through our eyes, registers the satiny texture of the fox’s fur, the coarseness of the tree bark and the crisp, brittleness of the fallen leaves, all within the same scene. My task as a painter is then to effectively recreate all these textures using different brush strokes, where necessary, so that the final work will retain the unity on canvas that our eyes perceive in nature.

2) Of the many positive responses to this piece, the most common refers to its depiction of light as a ‘golden hue.’  Of course, painting light is the proverbial task of the artist; how do you manage to express its vividness so effectively?As you said, light is what painting is all about and I feel that no matter how hard I work at it, my lifetime will never be long enough to really grasp and put on canvas all the complexities of light that are manifest in any given scene in the world around us. Having said that, I am gratified at the modest progress I have made over the last years in trying to attain this ultimate and perhaps impossible goal. Constantly observing, directly from nature and painting in plein air, which I admit I do not do enough of, has gone a long way to get where I am today, vis-à-vis this topic. When I observe things in nature, in this instance a fox, bathed in that beautiful late afternoon light, I  try to seize what are the qualities of the light that made that scene so arresting for me. What colours predominate? What are the nuances and subtler hues that set off those other predominate colours? What and where are the cooler and warmer colours. Basically, what are the colour harmonies that must be defined and played with in order to acheive what was essential for me in that scene. Every painting I start is a challenge to get that right and hopefully get it better than the last one.

3) This painting expresses a sense of balance between the fox and its landscape; how is this balance achieved?The balance between the fox and it’s landscape elements are purely a question of creating a composition that is sound and strong. In this painting I worked at paring down the components of the composition to the very basic essentials by editing out all  (mostly trees) that did not contribute directly to it.  This, coupled with the strong late afternoon light, I believe, gives the painting a bold presence that makes it stand out. On one of my walks in the woods, one late afternoon, I came upon this log nestled amongst the fallen leaves of the season and immediately saw the potential for a painting with a strong design. The fox almost immediately came to mind and after a few pencil doodles I settled on this composition.

4) The colours of the fox’s fur and the background blend quite nicely; does this concordance suggest something about the relations between wildlife and landscapes?Animals are fascinating subjects to paint but in my art I have focused most intently on the relationship that exists between the animal and it’s habitat. It is the natural forces in that habitat that have shaped, coloured and directed behavioural traits in all the creatures that reside within it. It is these relationships that I find most beautiful in the subjects I paint. I think that this painting typically examplifies my attempts to show how the animal is ultimately a product of it’s surroundings.