My latest works have been focusing on the use of pattern within my landscapes. Well, I guess you could call it pattern. There is often a motif of shape and sometimes a direction of movement but for the most part it is fairly chaotic and seemingly without order. Maybe that is what art is –trying to see pattern within chaos, trying to impose some sense of order so that we might better understand what we are seeing.
And maybe it is our reaction to seeing an emerging pattern that defines what we consider as beautiful. I am sure many of you have once seen an image that struck you immediately and remained in your mind even if it was only seen in a glimpse. I know I have. I am often mystified as to why this occurs. My only explanation is that its form and pattern somehow jibe with some innate sense of form and pattern, something inborn and with us since the beginning of our time as a species.
Perhaps even the patterns of those things of which we are made. Maybe the pattern is us.
And that could be expressed through religion. Or spirituality. Or physics. Or art…
That being said, this new painting is an 18″ by 36″ canvas that I am calling Into the Pattern. For me, it represents what I have written above– that we are part of the pattern and the pattern is part of who we are. The Red Tree here is understanding of this and begins to meld into the strong pattern of motion seen in the sky, as expressed by the leaves coming from its limbs.
This is a pretty simple image but it has a nice tension between chaotic motion and calm stillness of understanding. At one point, I had painted in a figure near the tree. For me, it absolutely destroyed the impact of the whole piece, distracting focus from what the painting was trying to send out. The figure just plain bothered me and it didn’t take much thought for me to decide to paint it over.
It was amazing how this changed the painting and my perception of it. Now, it is one of those pieces that I look at quite often throughout the day here in the studio, pondering what it is saying to me and trying to decide if we are part of the pattern or if it is part of us. Or both…
Redtree Times 