'The Wanderer'

Oil on panel, 18cm x13cm
© David Begley 2005 - 2007
Private Collection, Ireland

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'The Wanderer' was a recurring motif in Nineteenth Century German Romantic painting. These works proposed the transience of man's life through the presentation of a lone figure walking through a vast landscape. Often the figure carried a staff, perhaps walking towards a Chapel in the distance, a ruin, or a Cross surrounded by an area of light, implying the Wanderer's journey was a pilgrimage to enlightenment. Caspar David Friedrich is an example of artists working in this context.

While traveling through Spain in 2006 I spent much time walking - in the barren region of Almeria, the hills of Granada, over beaches, through caves, cities and eventually along some of the Camino De Santiago De Compostela. It was through time spent walking that many of the ideas for works came. One thought in particular was something I carried constantly - Where there is light, there is dark; when there is dark, there is light.

I painted two works under the title of 'The Wanderer', both of which evolved from the work 'Beloved, Nothing is as dark as it seems' [Oil on canvas panel, 13cm x 18cm, © David Begley 2005]. 'The Wanderer [For the Love of books]' [Oil on canvas panel, 18cm x 13cm, © David Begley 2006], was a piece which I returned to, originally made in 1999. I had never resolved it fully, and after a conversation with a librarian in a museum in Hamburg, I returned to the work in 2006. He found me making drawings of stacked books and wanted to know why. I explained that I had spent time traveling and that stories had come from these travels. In the work 'The Wanderer [For the Love of books]' a figure walks beyond a space in which a giant book is embedded in the cliffs.

'The Wanderer' Oil on canvas panel, 18cm x 12cm, © David Begley 2006/2007 [pictured above] also presents a lone figure, this time presented as a 'light' walking, or light in motion, towards a foreshortened 'landscape'. This landscape came from looking at the flat mountains of German Icons. In this case, the flat space is used to imply the reduced perspective the Wanderer has when surrounded by darkness. To this end there is no perspective in spatial terms in this work. The 'sky' is presented as a flat olive green space. Decorative elements at the edge refer to maps and the making of both Icons and Illuminated Manuscripts.

For many years I have been interested in the use of gold in Medieval European painting. Depending on the colour adjacent to the gold leaf used in these works, the gold can appear to have a hue leaning to either green or red. In works of my own, I was concerned with presenting the 'green of gold' [without using gold pigment], and also the Jade of Oriental works - see 'We Began Beneath a Tree' [Oil on linen, 25cm x 20cm, 2006/2007].

© David Begley 2007