Avatar Incarnate

Oil on canvas

40 x 84 inches

2023

I was seated on the last barstool next to the open door in Cipriani’s Bar, awaiting Helen, who was in our pensione, making final adjustments to her evening costume. With few cares, and fully under the spell of the Adriatic’s shimmering jewel, I blissfully sipped the evening’s first Campari and soda. Suddenly, a man wearing a black mask cavorted precariously and gleefully into plain view through the open portal, snaring my startled gaze. I perceived this jester’s mirthful abandon and improbable dance as a kaleidoscopic blur. For a frozen moment, as in a Muybridge photo, he stared directly into my eyes and emitted a slight smile, as if he knew me. Leaving more than enough lira on the bar, I slipped off my stool and followed him. His expression conveyed that his performance was intended for me alone. Still confounded, and lacking a witness, I cannot be certain of the events of that night. They resemble a dream, and yet I am haunted by vestiges and bits of memory too clear to dismiss, too unreal to accept. Was the experience real? Was it something that took place outside or within my own mind? Hoping to reconcile the events of that evening, I began sketches soon after returning to New York. I decided to reconstruct the feelings and events as best I could in a painting. So, using my keenest recollection, I set out with fervor to paint the jester’s appearance. The only thing of which I was certain was the costume itself. I also hoped to sort out the preoccupations of the unconscious mind from reality. This time, with a paintbrush in hand, I again followed the jester. I spent a good deal of time conceiving and tossing around a variety of compositions. Like any other, the picture—which I entitled Avatar Incarnate

Rob Mango - 2014 “100 Paintings, an Artist Life in New York City” courtesy, No Room for Doubt inc.

Amiss in the Abyss VI

2015Oil On Canvas48x84 Inches

2015

Oil On Canvas

48x84 Inches

I came to realize that the Venetian Carnivale’ clown, is the artist and as close to a self-portrait as I gotten so far. This is my 6th attempt to describe him, in each painting there has been urgency in bringing him back to life on canvas, always a quest in search of an answer. In each of the six paintings the only element, which remains the same, is the carefree pose. The networks of colors, which comprise his suit, are as varied as, the infinite colors in a child’s crayon box. The cap and collar always of a different design too. This collar is inspired by collars painted on the officials of high the courts, by the Dutch master; Rembrandt. The cap is a design I saw on the puppets of Old Town Square in Prague. 
 
 The contrast between finite depiction of the Jester suit and the raw elemental colliding, spiraling gases of sky is the primary aesthetic allure the heart this sixth Jester. My initial vision for the background would include a night sky, a cauldron of super heated alchemist liquid below ,and paint streaming off the artist’s palette, the reckless and carefree fling of red paint traveling outside the picture plane. There is a signature brushstroke, which can be seen in each of the previous five paintings of the Jester ,the thick snake-like stacked curvilinear formation of cobalt violet (as vital to the picture as my signature). 
  The night sky is a subtly layered dark composition of very flat oil scumbled over with equally dark primary Alizarin Crimson and Ultramarine blue oil crayon. It is a subtle effect, so subtle they may be missed in a reproduction. They are essential in this area, undulating behind to the circular galaxy of metallic golden ochre. Allowing a  dramatic mood behind in the galaxy. 
 The galaxy itself is a mortal, clumsy, attempt to illustrate heaven, although in another dimension time/space, I have always felt the immediate afterlife to be a spherical place with light at the center (one may in fact be dispatched from there for another tour of life; reincarnation). Billions of tiny flecks of gold float in a ¼ inch thick epoxy medium, which form the arms of the galaxy of heaven. Lighter in color and value than the cosmic darkness behind, it overlays in extreme contrast to the ultra flat background, giving it clarity, despite transparency thus compositional and thematic significance. 
  The fling of paint which brings movement to the painting is also made of the thick epoxy paint. The unique epoxy richness of heavenly galaxy and the artist flung paint should join them in relationship and significance for the viewer. They in fact do blend into one another in the exact middle of the picture. Red blends with Gold, Mother with Son.

 I create a painting with the will to be at once illustrative and narrative yet also abstract. A balanced composition seems essential to accomplish this goal.

  I had lost my mother in December of 2014.We were very close and I spent the final 48 hours of her life along with my sisters and father at her side. With my hand on her forehead-I felt her spirit intensely in those final hours . I came away from her passing determined to visually express the assembly of souls spiraling around the creator of the universe, of which I am certain she is one.

Acrobats

Oil on Canvas60X40 Inches2013

Oil on Canvas

60X40 Inches

2013

Crafting the wall behind the acrobats was not unlike building one with mortar, sand, lime and trowel-all were employed here. As construction progressed I contemplated the couple and felt stronger about their shadow than themselves.    Like the looking glass or last nights dream, a shadow suggests interchangeability of future and past, a glimpse of some one not seen an uncertain movement fleeting out of the corner your eye. Shadow is  phenomenon.A sub-dimension of physical reality,an entry point. It's plasticity could serve the picture in several ways also. I had become precious about the wall, so much so, I spent several weeks enjoying it alone. The advantages of a shadow without its origin in view inevitably grew, the cool, transparent tone of shadow prevented loosing precious square inches of the wall. One could see within and its unobtrusive soft border. Cool and warm values reverse( even a rose appears blue while in shadow), the dancers adumbrate still provides the viewer a human form, albeit without detail.   So I painted the shadow first as if the acrobats existed just out of sight. It was almost the best solution. The picture however, ultimately sought another course. My painting seems to require a firm resolution. One that leaves no doubt what I want you and I to see and feel. Once the performers assumed the stage I fell into rendering anatomical details, facial expression, fingers and toes, a degree of reality commensurate with the wall. The final and ultimately most important pictorial issue was becoming clear; how to make them definitive enough to exist in pictorial space in front of the eye catching wall, not to mention conquer their own shadow.  So a costume was devised. The pigment may not be quiet evident on the screen but the harlequin diamonds are grooved in texture and colored slightly metallic.

The Filal Daughter

Oil on Canvas over Sculpted Foam  72x90 Inches

Oil on Canvas over Sculpted Foam  

72x90 Inches

My fascination with costumes is not new, it goes back my childhood drawing army uniforms, clown suites and baseball players .The samurai is a short leap from GI Joe, who was evident in comic-book shops I escaped to, I looked at the pictures seldom read the captions. The leap in this painting may have been planted in my mind when "Chiyo" jumped from the rooftop while attempting to escape the geisha quarters in the novel "Memoirs of a Geisha". Movement in art is fundamental to figure drawing, I first encountered it as a student at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago. Moving beyond the picture frame, beyond the confines of your room, life, beyond your frame of mind. The figure is a transcendental symbol. The lines of movement create an opportunity to initiate abstract form around the figure. The pose itself was inspired by Yoshitoshi's One Hundred Aspects of the Moon. The fatal {filal} child intends to recapture her father's lost pride by inflicting her own death. The combination of brushed aluminum surface juxtaposed with the highly textured oil painting is reminiscent of my constructions and combine paintings of the 1970s.