Some Paintings
I have posted 4 paintings. They are not all new but I thought I would try out the format with them. Look for them under Albums (New album) which is above my photo on the far right side of this home page.
Posted by
at
01:34:17
Of the four, I guess I’m most interested in the blue one with boxes. They are shapes I recognize, and the colors, a range of blues and grays, are quite nice. None of the four instantly “speak to me,” because I have a hard time finding a focal point, or some obvious statement. Diffuse can be good, but in this case it makes me wonder what the message is. Or if there is a message.
Jesse Casman, Hi and thanks for the comments.
Some people look for signposts in paintings, poetry and music that they can safely hang onto. I think this is a fine thing and I love recurring shapes, word images and themes that I can recognize. But the unexpected, unusual or new combinations of words or paint or sound have their place, too. I think the audience for these is smaller because it takes a willingness to look beyond what one already knows and to try to react to the work emotionally without intellectualizing it.
I like to have the viewer’s eyes move around a piece by the placement of elements relative to each other as well as by using colors and directional lines, brush strokes or spaces to achieve this end. The fact that the viewer is not led to settle on one particular spot or item does not seem like a drawback to me although there are often areas which call for more attention than others do. Why not have every place in the painting equally interesting at any one moment?
I may be biased in wanting a story or some kind of obvious communication. An exploration of technique is fine, but requires a deeper understanding of painting, maybe. Feels almost like “advanced viewing,” that you’re asking a lot of your viewer, that the viewer is not enticed but rather chooses to come look.
I am going to try another comment, my last gone into hyperspace… eaten by wolves? Or a computer….
I think the abstraction of these images IS the power to draw up in. Its running sallie for me, that asks me to return. The architecture of the whole thing, all the rooms invoked by the paint, and there is a fluidness, the soft boundaries, no harsh logical lines, and the colors all sooth, all suggest a sense of life dancing; feminine and open. There is that part where the hanging of veils seems to half hide, half invite us futher into the painting, as if we can enter a cavernous space that should be hidden, like a crypt, or a secret vault, but is more open, more inviting like a woman in gossamer. The whole composition feels like it is moving and also showing me an interior, so its complexity invites me back.
The cubish one, with the blue hues, it reminds me of something I saw in Art In America about three years ago, and I really like the mystical quality of those colors… the bleeding of forms, strong and yet as if melting or meltable..
Enticing, all the blithe spirit ones, of course they are probably more powerful in life than here in little boxes on a laptop; the soft angles again, the soft color, fluidi motion, dance. The oxymoron static-flight comes to mind, but cross that out, you can’t make it work there… Who can say a thing, thanks for sharing.
Mansuetude,
Have you been, are you a writer? Obviously, you enjoy words and are willing to share your thoughts and feelings that way. Many of us use words like nice or interesting, never unleashing the quality words that are really descriptive.
Thanks so much for visiting Chuck and me. Your comments are thought about and appreciated.
Edna
particularly good at. Great news, nonetheless.
You did it! …How did you do it?