This is a painting I just completed yesterday, an 8″ by 26″ piece on paper, that I’m calling Edge of Light. It’s another piece that I am showing at my upcoming show, Toward Possibility,that opens November 6 at the the Kada Gallery in Erie, PA.
There is a lot that I could talk about in this painting. It has great underlying texture with swirls of chaotic fingerpaint-like slashes in the gesso. It has great depth into the picture plane that gives one the feeling of being able to fully enter the landscape. It has elements I seldom use in the stone walls of the short cliffs next to the water. It has rich colors and a winding road that pulls the viewer along.
But the element that stands out for me is the balance in this piece between the light generated from the hazy sun that burns through on the right side of the painting and the darkness in the color and shade of the left. When I look at a painting like this, one that is more horizontal, I always look at it as though there is a fulcrum underneath it, as though the painting were a teeter-totter and it rested on a support which allowed it to pivot upward or downward depending on which end had the greater weight. What I am trying to do is make the painting on that fulcrum, balancing elements so that it seems to hover effortlessly level above this pivot point.
In this painting, this is all about balancing the light between the two opposing sides. The greater the light coming from one side, the greater the darkness in the other side. The darkness on the left makes the light coming from the other side appear brighter. However, in a wide piece like this, if the the contrast is too great, the lighter side becomes too dominant, too heavy in a way, and the balance on the fulcrum is broken. I think this painting has that balance that I’m seeking.
I don’t know if this makes sense to anyone but myself. Like a lot of things I do, this is a matter of feel and trying to describe how feel works often requires using analogies that may not always make sense. In the end, I simply paint and if I’ve done all I can with the feel of which I talk, the viewer will easily take in the painting without considering things like balancing on a pivot point.
Redtree Times 