A Look Back

Keeping a photo record of past works provides a way to review ideas and thoughts and also to assess changes in the work as it progresses. Depending on content, old paintings and sketches are a great way to revisit past events and seasons. Written journals are fine, but pictures are better, in my opinion. Sometimes a subject comes to mind that produced interesting work. 

Pieter Claesz, "Vanitas," oil, 1630

For years an interest of mine has been the vanitas paintings of the Dutch Golden Age, for example this incredibly detailed and finished work by Pieter Claesz. This and other vanitas works most commonly feature a human skull prominently as a symbol of mortality plus other similar symbols--clocks, bubbles, snuffed candles and the like. These works were intended to remind the viewer that life is fleeting as is written in a biblical verse: "Vanitas vanitatum. Omnia vanitas," or "Vanity of vanities. All is vanity."

Hoff, "Skull," graphite on paper 8x10, 2001

Although the idea of mortality might be considered morbid, it's certainly a reality. My own thoughts on the vanitas genre have led me to sketch and paint the subject in several different ways and mediums. For example, this graphite drawing of a skull was done long ago as a preliminary study for a vanitas project that didn't reach completion. In this particular drawing my main interest was in rendering the anatomic structures accurately.

Eventually I made study in oil of a skull, and for fun I put a baseball cap on top. The grinning skull and backward cap seem to complement each other somehow, so after pondering the idea of vanitas images as warnings of mortality it seemed natural to make a vanitas that alluded to the risk factors for the number one killer in the United States: heart attack.

The risk factors for the underlying arterial disease responsible for heart attack include smoking, diabetes, excess cholesterol in the blood and high blood pressure, among others. So the final vanitas (above) had to include symbols or mentions of those conditions. In the end that meant salt (high blood pressure) a donut (diabetes), a cigarette package, and a stick of butter (high cholesterol). The reversed cap can be read as a foolish or cavalier attitude toward risk.