Leonard Greco's somewhat consistent, often bumbling studio journal
Author: babylonbaroque
I am a painter and printmaker working towards creating a body of work that reflects my own developing aesthetic.
New work ,first link.
The second link is an on-line portfolio.
Good Friday ,has for some time, been for me a day to reflect , not in a self consciously “religious” way ( I seem to lack the traditional faith element) but in an existential way ( talk about sounding self conscious and pretentious). I plan to spend this day with a friend , check out some art and be more acutely aware of this situation we call life that I am so entangled in. For one day I will be disentangled and no matter what you believe , there aren’t any retakes .
Enclosing a few images from paintings depicting the deposition of Christ.
The Descent from the Cross, 2015, acrylic on canvas
Given tomorrow is St.Patrick’s Day and that its celebration is a well loved childhood memory (my mother’s surname being Murphy after all) I wanted to post something to honor the saint who drove the serpents out of Ireland. I found glancing through past work , that although I am very fond of the saint, I’ve never drawn him before. I decided to remedy that error and set about putting together this rendering .
I hope he would be pleased.
Blessed Saint Patrick
2016
graphite, colored pencil, pastel and mixed media on paper
18 by 24″
Last minute I snipped away one of my relief prints and added the harpy to the composition ; I’m pleased with the result.
I must have sensed on some level that the holiday was approaching as I have been listening to quite a bit of Irish folk music. A favorite is The Raggle Taggle Gypsy O , particularly as interpreted by the great countertenor Andreas Scholl. I thought I would include it into this post. Link below.
Seeing a certain carrot-topped charlatan bloviate and strut about the former Post estate in Palm Beach (a house that somehow manages to maintains its beauty in spite of the vulgarian within) boasting of how he is going to “make America great again”, I am reminded of the many other pompous Palm Beach parvenues I had the misfortune to work for in my over twenty year career as a decorative painter. It is incredibly unprofessional to bad mouth former clients and decorators, but frankly leaving behind that often shallow and tight-fisted business, particularly in Florida, was the best decision I have made.
One wretched client I recall vividly, he specifically admired and wished to emulate Mr. Trump and unsurprisingly the motif he chose to decorate the dining room of his newly poured 30,000 square foot McMansion was the peacock. In my many years as a decorative painter I have found the peacock to be the most requested theme. Don’t get me wrong, I love the peacock as a decorative motif but to be snobbish about it, I like to think my fondness has roots in the Art Nouveau not the aspirations of the nouveau riche. This client, unlike what I have read of Mr.Trump, was particularly miserly. He would willingly boast of the $100,000.00 chandelier he had just purchased and his self aggrandizing decorator would boast of the spontaneous trips they had just taken on his private jet to pick up some god-awful ersatz baroque settee; but when it came to hiring the local, not-so-famous, struggling artist willing to paint the still damp walls of his faux palazzo, well then , that fellow could haggle.
Such is the life of a struggling artist, be it decorative or studio, so much depends on the market, your own financial situation and how willing you are to debase yourself to stay afloat. Sometimes you just don’t have many options. David and I had a cute little house in Ft.Lauderdale, his practice was still developing and we had a mortgage to pay. So the two grand that the client assured me was ALL he could afford was settled upon. In the end, as in all experiences, there were lessons learned: how to manipulate cheap house paint quickly (of course there was a deadline that just HAD to met); dealing with ineffective decorators who still demanded their cut no matter how paltry the commission; and of course, slowly, excruciatingly slowly, recognizing my own worth.
This wall painting has its flaws, as in my studio work I do not possess an academically trained polish to my work, and in my decorative work, my tromp l’oeil was less than convincing. But they are attractive and I believe distinctive. And this painting, finished in the three week deadline, isn’t that bad.
I’m going through file after file of old commissions, some going back to the 80’s, I’m also cobbling together a website for them, an archive free of dust, but full of memories . Some memories make me cringe , but some , like this one still pleases me in spite of the bitter aftertaste .
More details:
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It has to be noted that the presumptuous genius Whistler openly mocked his client Frederick Richards Leyland for not appreciating the completely unrequested “improvements” to his now famous ( and rightly well regarded Peacock Room) by depicting him in a harsh caricature of a demonic peacock. I still question if Whistler had the right to squawk after he had painted over newly installed (expensive)16th leather wall coverings (which sound like they must have been fantastic), but nonetheless , this painting is great fun and the room a wonder of the world to this day.
James Mc Neill Whistler
The Gold Scab:Eruption in Filthy Lucre
1879
I lack Whistler’s hubris and genius, but if my peacock is still there (so much of what I have painted has been destroyed in subsequent redecorations) I hope he is giving the clients dirty looks as they feast!
With that little bitter gem, be well, and now back to the studio.
Just moments ago I finished up a drawing of the abbot of the desert St. Anthony. This well intentioned saint who sought to avoid worldliness and the corruption that follows only found himself in the thick of it. Anthony is my muse (as he was to Bosch, to symbolists such as Flaubert and to many Surrealists), I turn to him time and again and have lost count as to how many works I have devoted to this early father of the Church . But one attribute of the anchorite that I particularly love is the company he keeps, pigs. The pig is found in many depictions of the hermit but this is the first time I have worked one of my favorite beasties into the composition. I’m sure there will be many more.
In this depiction I tried to incorporate,in a whimsical way, classical elements to depict worldliness ; not that I feel humanism is corrupt but classical sculpture can certainly raise one’s pulse.
The Temptation of St. Anthony of the Desert (and his pig)
2016 graphite and pastel on paper
18 by 24″
My love of pigs is personal, being a vegan I have a particular attachment to this highly intelligent and sensitive creature . David sponsored a pig for me this year as a Christmas present, her name is Sweet Tea and she is well tended to by the loving folks at Ironwood Pig Sanctuary. Although I wish she lived with us we can easily visit her in Tuscon AZ, we plan on visiting her at least every boxing day. This image is from the day we first met, as you can see she is quite adorable and friendly. It is delightful how pigs rush to you when you enter their compound, ever greedy for treats and attention.
Sweet Tea
Like I mentioned Anthony is often depicted with a pig, this little gem of painting by Lelio Orsi (1511-87) is one of my favorites at the Getty, I search it out whenever I visit.
On my last visit I noticed this wee little pig pawing at the anchorite’s robe as fervently as my pug Viola.
As I mentioned I will be sure to return to Anthony time and again, my very sweet and very talented friend, the artist and musician Henry Kitchen offered to pose, sending along this funny photo. He is actually a perfect Anthony, right down to the hoodie.
I feel I am finally nearing the finish line on a large painting I have been working on. Today’s segment being a demiurge character (part of a long complicated personal narrative that I will go into at some other time). A demiurge being understood as a false god, or as Webster asserts:”in Gnosticism and other theological systems, a heavenly being, subordinate to the Supreme Being, that is considered to be the controller of the material world and antagonistic to all that is purely spiritual.”
With the false Christians (who one would hardly call ‘heavenly”) in the GOP espousing such ugliness to win their party’s nomination this evening, finishing my own false idol was particularly satisfying.
With that, I clean my brushes and head home, good night.
Lately I have been working rather diligently on experiencing lucid dreams; doing this so that I may better discern my unconscious mind. An although my dreams have been extravagant , I have as of yet, had only two lucid dreams. Last evening being the second.
It seemed a short dream , which was a pity as it was set in the Palace of Versailles (a place I have not had the chance to visit and which I fear I may never actually visit). In this dream I have the ghost of Louis XVI on my back and he is directing me from his suite to the ground floor. He is doing so through some sort of night goggles, the images are sepia toned, and I soon realize I am having a lucid dream . From my knowledge of the palace, I begin to direct myself downward, it is dawn, barely lit and we are all alone. But as we descend to what I know will be the grand staircase it all evaporates as thoroughly as the Ancien Regime itself.
This charcoal sketch is my accounting of the dream and aside from my commedia dell’ arte costume which is how I often designate myself in drawings, it pretty accurately captures the mood of the dream.
2016
charcoal, pastel and a bit of collage on charcoal paper
12 by 18″
As I mentioned, I have been having many other vivid dreams as well, and this image Out on a Limb was inspired by two recurring dreams, none of which were lucid, but which still moved me deeply. In one series of dreams I am consistently losing my right hand ( my working hand) which of course is quite disturbing . In another I am in a snowy metropolitan area, high above mankind, as I looked down I see the most pitiful bat-bird like creatures slowly freezing to death. No matter how much I alert others to their plight and no matter how I try to disentangle them from the ice, I cannot save them. The dream left me breathless and despondent. I tried to capture that sense in this graphite drawing.
Out on a Limb
2016
graphite and colored pencil on charcoal paper
19 by 25″
That said, I will close with the good old boy himself, have a great week.
Much of my day yesterday was spent in my life drawing class and frankly I should have just stayed put in my studio . The model was extraordinary, a beautiful and graceful woman who knew how to strike a pose ( and sustain it ). And the drawings really weren’t that bad but my choice of medium (Sanguine and graphite ) made for unhappy results, muddy ugly affairs. The truth is I have difficulty producing ” finished drawings”, ones that stand on their own. For I have spent my life viewing my daily drawing practice as a sevice to my painting practice . I left the class feeling I had squandered the elegance of the model and having wasted many hours.
Happily my studio time that evening was more productive , familiar medium , my music ( not EDM!) and the beasties . I finished up yet another figure in a complex painting , nearing closer to the finish line.
This is a detail of a larger composition (a painting that may very well kill me), this detail is of the great and bountiful Aztec earth goddess Coatlicue (She of the Serpent Skirt,see her official portrait below, taken at the Anthropology Museum of Mexico City, where she resides in terrifying splendor) and her troublesome bastard son, the bloodthirsty, ever demanding war god Huitzilopochtli tugging at her serpentine skirt.
It has been a rough week for my ego, starting on Monday with the withering appraisal of some gym bunnies . I was washing up after my work out and I could just feel their chilly disdain for this goofy, ill-dressed, scrawny, not very fit fellow. I felt ridiculously ashamed and wanted to rush out; but instead , this phrase popped into my head, “my insignificance is magnificent”. So I went back to my dainty, silly bicep curls, finished my work out and then proceeded to the studio to work on this little painting. In between painting, school and life, I felt buffeted by life’s indifference: I received several rejections for juried entries that I had hoped to be included in, frankly a benign snarky comment at school that stung nonetheless and the usual brutal election year antagonism on FB …that and just recognizing my own limitations artistically which is humbling. But instead of sinking into my usual depressive funk I instead went to work on this painting. Perhaps it isn’t particularly good but the mantra “my insignificance is magnificent ” was helpful.
Good Friday ,has for some time, been for me a day to reflect , not in a self consciously “religious” way ( I seem to lack the traditional faith element) but in an existential way ( talk about sounding self conscious and pretentious). I plan to spend this day with a friend , check out some art and be more acutely aware of this situation we call life that I am so entangled in. For one day I will be disentangled and no matter what you believe , there aren’t any retakes .
Agnus Dei,2015, relief print on paper 
Boondocks Babylon 