Into the Screen: Still-Life and Moving Image is on display at the upper floor of Rowe’s Gallery between Oct. 2 and 29.
For his upcoming show, artist and part-time teacher, Andrew Leventis takes a screen still from a suspense or horror film and paints the image onto a canvas.
“In this series I’m going to be taking imagery from horror films and looking at moments in the narrative right before something happens to one of the central characters,” says Leventis. “So I’m taking inspiration from the movie ‘Vertigo’ and ‘Suspiria’ by Dario Argento, it’s not as well known, but it’s kind of a cult classic horror film.”
Leventis goes for a more retro style with some of his images by painting films that use Technicolor. “I got one that’s from ‘Picnic at Hanging Rock’ which is a horror film from the ’70s, so everything has this glowing Technicolor imagery,” Leventis says.
This past year as he worked on Into the screen, he found difficulties balancing it with his teaching schedule. “I’m really struggling to finish because teaching is new to me and so I’m struggling with balancing teaching and making work, trying to organize the classes and then the amount of time it takes teaching,” Leventis says.
Into the Screen’s date changed several times before settling on October. Leventis sees it as happy accident as it fits in with the theme of Halloween.
Despite his busy schedule, Leventis paints every day. A single painting can take anywhere from one to two months for him to complete. He hopes to have nine paintings finished by the deadline.
“I try to look at it like a full-time job if I can, so even I finish teaching I try to get in a little bit of painting in everyday, even if it’s just an hour or so,” Leventis says. “I can go like an eight hour to 12 hour stretch painting if I’m having a good day.”
Before Into the Screen, Leventis had been painting from historic dramas such as “The Tudors” and the original “Upstairs Downstairs” series.
“Well I’ve always looked at artists who have used mediated imagery in one way or another, like they haven’t just painted from direct observation,” Leventis says. “So the look of their paintings would be kind of distorted and grainy and dark a bit, and so doing it, those have always been influences for me for a while.”
Before attempting mediated imagery, Leventis attended an art school in London. There he toured museums, taking photos he’d planned to paint later.
“I tried to make them look like they weren’t taken from photographs and so I actually opened my laptop too and I would make paintings from the laptop screen because it looked more lifelike than a photograph,” Leventis says. “Eventually I was thinking why don’t I just try to emulate the look of the LCD screen or the kind of mediated imagery of the photograph that I’m using, instead of trying to cover it up and make it look more lifelike.”
During his time in art school, Leventis painted exclusively with oils which he continues to do today. “Like I said I went to this conceptually rigorous school and they were always trying to get us to use other media and try different techniques and I was kind of stubborn about it and always stuck with oil paintings,” Leventis says.
Leventis also has a solo Exhibit coming out in London in January 2015 which’ll include pieces from Into the Screen.
“Still Life with Girl Embroidering” oil on linen painting by Andrew (photo courtesy of artist’s website)