Aging and Vermeer

I was chatting with a friend over morning tea the other day and commented on how I had come to appreciate Vermeer even more as I get older. He possibly employed the camera obscura to aid him in his paintings and there has been much discussion and docmuentation about that process in his art making practice. British artist David Hockney believes it was not only Vermeer that used the machine and has produced a TV documentary exploring the possibilities, but however he worked, he produced works of great integrity that were labours of love in paint.

Recently I've been revisiting Vermeer's works looking more closely at his brushmarks and what he leaves out of paintings. In his Allegory of Beauty, the fabric of the tapestry in the foreground is quite chunky and unfocussed and Vermeer makes marks which are deceptive to the eye because he over simplifies or changes the information he gives to his viewer. We are seduced by the intimacy of Vermeer as he takes us into quiet secluded and intimate places - in the artist's studio, reading a love letter, working quietly over maps and charts, practising a musical instrument or the tangible moment of relationships between courting couples.

Vermeer is the master of the candid moment, but he also employs a clever scientific way of painting as he only gives the brain the necessary information it needs to complete the picture with his shorthand method. It's a bit like drawing 7/8s of a circle and allowing the brain to fill in the rest of the circle or arc as we understand it is complete and full. If you haven't explored Vermeer, take time to look at this Little Dutch Master's masterpieces. When I visited the Tate in London, I was fortunate enough to see 7 of his 28 existing works in the one room together.

Exquisite, sublime and paintings that capture the love and tenderness of some of the mundane and everyday aspects of life, Vermeer's works are tender love letters to his wife Catherine in oil. She appears pregnant in some of the pieces (an unsual depiction for Baroque times, but she did bear him 15 children despite a marriage that was not family approved) but always Vermeer captures the intimate warmth and quiet sacredness of moments of a man who is deeply and passionately in love... a state of being that shines through his brushwork four centuries later.

Burn brightly, Pete