Archive for the ‘abstract’ Category

Getting Back on the Path

This is a revision of a previous work (see February 12). I had painted over the original with large ‘x’ like shapes that looked like freeways. Mostly I did this out of frustration hoping that if I did any crazy thing that that something would come out of it. Of course it looked crappy. But I had kept a photo of it at an earlier stage  and after a while thought it didn’t look so bad. So I just repainted it to match the original, making improvements where they seemed to make sense. Hope you like it

Seeing things

Another attempt at abstraction..starting with blues and oranges and intersecting shapes, which led to a repetition of triangular shapes. Shortly after I took this photo, the painting coalesced into a small seaside new england town, replete with sailboats, a lighthouse, well maintained white clapboard houses and church with freshly painted blue roofs. And of course the requisite autumn foliage. I mean that I saw this in my mind but once I had that image there I couldn’t maintain the integrity of the work. At least as an abstract. And I didn’t really have enough information to paint representationally. And it sort of fell apart. But at least I have this photo. And maybe I can resurrect this stage again, which, though not finished, is sort of interesting.

Abstracted

Starting with a simple design of horizontal planes and intersecting lines and a few ideas for color, I began to randomly fill in with flat color just to see where it would lead. At some point it seemed that pink had to dominate. I got looser with the paint, using a palette knife. Purples and blue contrasted nicely with that. It seem like a pleasant design but looking a little flat. Something had to go in the foreground. A few quickly drawn black lines and daubed-in white and gray shapes and an ancient civilization seemed to sprout instantly off the rocky cliffs. I began to wonder, what was their means of sustenance? I had such a storyline built up around this that I don’t think I could finish the picture. I ended up painting much of what you see above with what looked like a huge freeway (not shown). More on this later.

Drawing on the Imagination

This is the result of a class I am taking called “Abstract Representation” taught by Jordan Bruns at the Yellow Barn Studio in Glen Echo, MD. Jordan is a new teacher at the school and maintains a studio there as well. I had been fascinated by his large swirling drawings and paintings that start with random marks or paint drippings but then turn into vast ancient ruins that don’t exactly obey the laws of gravity but seem real enough to get lost in. I started this work by covering a large sheet of heavy paper with a coating of powdered graphite. All the marks on it were made by erasing away the graphite to the white of the paper. I then went back in with more powdered graphite applied with a Q-tip. Somewhere along the way the random markings I made begin to turn into images–buildings,trees and clouds. Eventually this drawing coalesced into a scene of  a strange city at night. It is interesting how this process works; you start with seemingly nonobjective marks on paper and then suddenly memories and experiences start to come up. It seems the trick is to wait until the right image comes along, the one that won’t minimize the abstract power of the work but harmonize with it.

Under Construction

Like the previous work, this is a “painting construction”. That is the painting starts with a general idea of the process and then is pieced together on the fly. The subject matter, which here looks like you are looking up at some office building under construction and seeing some leaves floating down towards you, is accidental and comes towards the end of the work. I started with masking out some diagonal lines on a small sheet of watercolor paper with painter’s tape, then filling them in quickly. Then reverse the maks and filled in the sky with a large soft brush which gives some very subtle gradations in color.The contrast of these soft gradations and the hard edges seems to give the painting some depth.