Archive for the ‘acrylic’ Category

Life is but a stage

Another work along the same line  of the city scene I did earlier this year. Like the previous piece it is acrylic on paper and based on a photograph of a street in nearby Bethesda. I experimented in both with adding a lot of texture to the paint, in this case with pumice gel that I felt  added to the feeling of concrete and harsh summer light.  The point of the painting was to include as many details of city life as possible, to have some respect for the lives lived in each window, but to also to have the painting work abstractly as pictorial space, to have the eye led gradually into and out of the painting. Secondarily there is a little mini-drama going on of a delivery van parked in the street and a car having to cross into the opposite lane to pass it. Drama might be too strong a word, but we do take our driving infractions seriously here in Bethesda.

Construction/Destruction

This large, 3′ x 4′ painting was inspired by photographs I took of an abandoned field that was slated for a housing development. There was some sign of construction, of freshly dug raw earth and plastic orange  fencing and piles of dirt but basically with the economy the way it is the site has been left in this in-between state for over a year. Right next to this is a new shopping mall that is only half occupied. You can see this in the upper left part of the painting. I think what attracted me originally to the site was the  orange fencing against the green grass. While I worked on the painting I added gestural orange lines that seemed to suggest plans for future building. If you asked me to explain what this painting was about I would say something about the contrast of land as an actual place vs. our concept of ownership and business. But really I just like the way orange glows against the other colors and the spidery lines of dry grass. I feel like the hole in the earth might conceal buried treasure.

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

Hanging a Louie

A recent painting from a source photo of downtown Bethesda. I worked out the composition first using graphite powder on a large sheet of heavy paper, sealed it, then added several layers of acrylic paint using both modeling paste for texture and painting medium for glazing. Except for a few changes for the purpose of composition, the photograph was followed closely and portrays relatively accurately the view north on Wisconsin Avenue approaching East-West Highway. I like to think that the yellow building in the background is posing a dilemma to the viewer entering the painting, veer right towards the darkness or left towards the light? And from the signs posted it is clear there is no turning around.

What I have been working on

This is a rather large piece (40″ x 30″) that was based on a photograph which I used previously for a small sketch (see January 5th).I find these larger canvases a challenge to keep the whole thing holding together. With smaller canvases, I have a feel for the whole thing, maybe because you can see everything at the same time  when working at arm’s length. But with a larger canvas, the work needs to be done piecemeal. In this case, I first worked on the buildings, then on the foreground, then on the sky, etc. but rarely worked on the piece as a whole. There a quite a few layers here as I tried to work out the kinks in the composition. Though the original photograph has a river in the foreground, during the painting process, the river dried out and a figure appeared, who seems to be looking up at the city spread out before him with amazement and some dismay. The painting seemed to demand a more illustrative approach in order to tell this story.

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.

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.

Making It Up

Instead of painting from a still life of model, I thought I would try to make something up. I just started this small work filling in the background with a smooth gradation with a large brush, then filled in some white shapes here and some dark green shapes there. It seemed a little skewed to the blue-green range and was crying for some red. What better way to tie the painting together than with a big red “X”? I added a little house and connected the white cloud shapes to the house’s chimney. Is the painting a warning to clean your chimney before you light a fire? Or is it just a silly excuse to paint. You be the judge.

You can take a boy out of the country but you can’t take the country out of a boy.

Though recently I have been drawing mostly, I have also been working in acrylic lately to ease myself back into painting. I am also looking for a subject matter that I can sink my teeth into for a while. Since I have done several paintings of urban scenes that have been well received, I thought I would continue in that vein. Typically landscape painting focuses on more rural scenes probably because people find natural subjects more pleasant and relaxing to look at. I mean who wants to look at the freeway after driving on it all day? But living only blocks from the national Beltway, the subject matter is close at hand for me. And maybe there will be some kind of catharsis in the viewer who will take a new look at their surroundings on their daily commute. Anyway I have always been more of a city boy.