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The piano in my studio helps me to like decompress in some sense I guess
often it's the way I start the day
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Sheet music isn't on the piano because
I primarily play by ear
As you start discovering how to pick apart chords
and figuring out what is that dissonance
why do I like that
There's the problem-solving element of it
that is euphoric
It's analogous to painting in that sense
It's this thing that's utilizing your senses to hopefully affect a person emotionally
My name is Jas Knight and I'm working on a copy of Juan de Pareja at the Metropolitan Museum
Almost every artist was a copyist up until the 20th century because as a
painter you would go through certain exercises to learn how to paint
You haven't begun to see a painting until you've copied it
Well, you haven't begun to copy a painting
until you've seen the painting
Actually, let's soften it now
There's nothing like being in front of the canvas
You're able to go right up to the original painting and look at it
I've always wanted to copy the Juan de Pareja
It's a painting done by Velázquez in his mature style
The opportunity to just have four-hour sessions
of concentrated looking at the original painting
that's really what I wanted to get out of painting the Velázquez
There's nothing easy about copying Juan de Pareja
[laughs]
There's absolutely nothing easy about doing this copy
Not the least of which was the
persistent interruptions by Museum visitors
which I didn't necessarily mind but it just compounded the problem
This is like some sort of obstacle course
Make it happen in spite of all of these circumstances
I've seen so many bad copies of this particular painting so I'm trying to avoid that
Diego Velázquez is considered one of the great painters of history
He'd figure out a lot of things that even a lot of artists today are struggling with
If you look at the collar, the indication of the embroidery
It's just a couple flecks of lead white but it seems to have all of this detail
There's this almost diaphanous quality
this very mollified, soft quality that is pervasive in the painting
the hardest edge is the edge around the iris
the simultaneity of that with this softness
it's like sweet and sour sauce or something, you know
it's like putting a little chocolate with salt on it, you know
it's pulling your taste buds in two different directions
So, he's creating certain areas of focus to bring your eye to a particular place
He's forcing us to lock eyes with the eyes of Juan de Pareja
Just like in life, when you focus your eyes on another person
other elements fall out of focus he similarly mimics that with the paint
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Velázquez's brain is on that canvas
So we're encountering a person's brain
that doesn't exist anymore when we're looking at a painting by them
I'm literally interacting with Velázquez
there's some essence of a human being that he seems to have encapsulated
in this painting
and that's one of the things that we marvel at
when we look at works like that in the Museum