I’ve shown pieces with multiple panels and images here in the past and they often are very regimented, with each panel measured and uniform in size. There is sense of order in these paintings. But I’ve been doing a few multiple pieces lately that are less precise, with individual panels that bulge and expand in a fashion that creates a sense of the organic. I find these pieces very naturally engaging, meaning that the organice nature of the lines create a sense of rightness that lets you take it in easily, without questioning its validity or accuracy.
I think this piece is a good example of what I’m trying to describe here. It’s a small 12″ square canvas that I’m calling On a Cellular Level. The raw but right nature of the lines and the interaction between the individual panels here gives me the sense of each panel being a living cell. Living and moving, affected by each surrounding even though it is complete within itself. The RedTree here is part of a group of cells that bulges up and downward, almost like mutated cells.
I don’t know if there’s any meaning in that observation but it makes the piece more alive for me. Less static.
There is just something that I really like about these multiple paintings. Perhaps it is the power of a simple image presented in an amplified sense. Kind of like tap-dancing. One person doing a very simple tap step is not that compelling. But put a hundred people doing the same simple step together and it becomes a powerful entity. Or maybe it’s like singing. One average voice singing a simple tune, while it may be lovely, may not come across as powerful. But add a hundred voices, none extraordinary, and you have a magnificent chorus.
Maybe that’s how I will start viewing these multiples, as choruses. But for now, I see this painting on a cellular level.
Redtree Times 