Leonardo da Vinci perfected the painting technique known as “Sfumato” – from the Italian sfumare, “to evaporate like smoke” – in the 16th century. This technique uses fine shading in painting or drawing to produce soft, imperceptible transitions between colors and tones. The Mona Lisa is often considered the purest example of the sfumato method.
“Fumage,” on the other hand, is a painting technique that pushes these ideas of soft fluid transitions in a very different direction by using smoke itself to create the image. The Canadian artist Steven Spazuk has perfected the fumage technique in his exquisitely elegant fire paintings.
Spazuk’s medium is the carbon residue produced from actual fire; his “brush” is an open candle flame. The resultant impression of soot on a white ground is that of virtual smoke, as if smoke has been frozen in time. Once this diaphanous layer has been established, Spazuk uses feathers and brushes to lift and scratch away the soot and to create the image he envisions. As the artist explains, “The path the soot takes is as random as the path a fish takes in the water or a bird in the air. I put the flame to the paper and let a shape appear. Searching the abstract form, I wait for a fig¬urative revelation, like when I was a child looking up at a cloud.”
The fumage technique lends an ephemeral note to Smoky Owl. The wispy tones of grey impart a fragility or temporary nature to the owl’s noble portrait, a theme that Spazuk notes lies at the center of his work as a fine artist: “Fire has destructive and constructive properties, which can give life and take it away. [My] compositions allude to this force in nature, as they reflect the fragility and grit of life on earth.”
Steven Spazuk lives and works in Quebec, Canada. He may be reached through his website. There, you will find videos showing his unusual painting technique and the tools he employs.