Tim's Vermeer Page #2

---

To me, what was most striking

about the Vermeers, as a video guy,

I'm looking at this image,

and I see a video signal.

I see something that looks like

it came out of a video camera.

So I thought about how a painter

could actually copy that.

Now, most people that have played

with a camera obscura

got the idea that they could take that

projected image and somehow paint on it.

Well, I've tried that and a lot of people

have tried it, it's impossible.

What happens is it actually fights you,

it works against you,

it's worse than nothing at all.

Painting on a projection just doesn't work.

Here's a blue that matches very closely

the blue in the projection.

Imagine this is wet paint.

When you put it into the projection,

it looks way too dark.

On the other hand, here's a perfect match.

The colour that matches

the projected colour just right.

The only colour that'll

ever do that is white.

Tim went around

the world studying Vermeer.

They called it "painting with light."

Vermeer "painted with light."

You can't paint with light,

you have to paint with paint.

And so what they're really talking about

is this verisimilitude that Vermeer has,

that it just pops.

You see it from across the room

and it looks like a slide,

it looks like a colour slide of Kodachrome.

Seeing the Vermeers in person

was a revelation.

It reinforced to me that

I was on the right track.

That what I was seeing was an accurate

representation of the colour in that room.

I just had a hunch that there must be a way

to actually get the colours accurate,

with mechanical means.

Some way you could do that

in the 17th century.

I remember just having this vague idea

of comparing two colours with a mirror,

and it didn't go any farther than that

for a long time.

Sitting in the bathtub,

you know, that's I guess where you have

your eureka moments,

but, I don't know,

there's something about bath water...

It's just very, very relaxing.

And I was just picturing that mirror

hanging there in space,

and I pictured what I would see,

and there it was.

And so I grabbed a piece of paper,

being careful not to get it wet,

made a sketch, and that

was where I realised

Vermeer could have used a mirror

to paint those paintings.

To test this I propped up a high school

photograph of my father-in-law on the table.

I put a piece of Masonite down here

to paint on.

I set a small mirror at a 45-degree angle.

And for the first time in my life,

I did just what Vermeer may have done.

I picked up some oil paints and a brush.

In Vermeer's camera

this would be a projection,

a lens is projecting this image.

But to show the actual

mirror painting process,

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes