The Beginning Of A New Painting

Detail of the under painting of my new work- Stephanie Tihanyi

I have begun a new painting. So far, I have only just worked upon the under-painting, following the techniques of the old masters, instructed to me by my professor Philip Rubinov Jacobson, who was directly taught by Ernst Fuchs, the founder of the Viennese school of Fantastic Realism. I started upon a ground of English red earth and egg tempera mixture, and the began to work on the under painting in titanium white and egg tempera. This image to me is very powerful and instinctual. It requires a lot of energy and fortitude to  draw forth this painting, a bit like cycling up a long steep hill emotionally.
Sometimes you look into the light, sometimes you choose to look into the dark...
 today I work on under-painting a detail of my new work, it features the
beast of the apocalypse , its about the beast of ones own apocalypse.  Confronting our darkness of our past, needs a certain level of understanding (light) to be able to make sense of what we uncover, plus courage. I am fascinated with the darker side, it is a mystery, most times a tyrant,  so a worthy opponent to confront. I understand its not a path for everyone. In myths it is the hero, that boldly walks into the depths of Hades to extract the treasure or wisdom or take back something stolen. To the ancient Greeks, the daemonic appears not only through elements “inside” the self—the passions, the blood, but also “outside” the self—in wind, rain, fire, animals. Plato understood, its the dynamic unrest that exists in us all that forces us into the unknown, leading to self-destruction and/or self-discovery. In Japanese Shinto, Buddhist tradition its known as theTengu.