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Posts Tagged ‘Recent Painting’

Product of the Past

Posted in Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged on October 20, 2010| 3 Comments »

This is a new painting, just finished yesterday.  It’s an 18″ by 18″ canvas that is a very simple tonal composition, letting the atmosphere created between the sky and the burnt orange field that runs to the horizon create the impact of the painting.  It has a very clear air about it that gives it the sense of being a very distinct moment in time.

It has a bittersweet feel, at least in the way I see it.  The openness of the landscape and the stream that runs to a far horizon indicates a hopeful, forward looking quality.  Optimistic.   But the colors in the sky and the field have tinges of darkness that hint at an underlying deeper and less optimistic quality.  Perhaps the shaded thinking that comes with experience.

The tree itself, for me, has the hallmarks of these same traits.  It is bright and upward moving yet it is bent and twisted from factors that have influenced its growth over its life on that little mound next to a small stream.  The hardships of its past are written in its appearance.  Yet  it remains upward moving, pulled toward light. 

From the last brushstroke that touched the canvas, this is how I saw this piece– as a product of its past, determined by how it weathered its experience. 

It is bent.  It is twisted.  Yet it stands tall and hopeful, open to a new day.

Well, that’s how I see it.  Maybe its just a twisty tree on an orange mound.

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Triptych

Posted in Recent Paintings, Technique/History, tagged on September 20, 2010| 4 Comments »

This is a small triptych that I recently completed.  I’ve done several triptychs over the years and really enjoy the challenge of composing the three separate panels into one cohesive piece.   There are obstacles to overcome in order to make the overall piece work well in attracting and holding the viewer’s attention over the width of the painting.

 This piece, done in the gray style with a dash of red that I’ve used a bit year, has panels that each measure approximately 4 1/2″ by 6″.  The smaller panels change the way I view each panel in composing this.  When doing a larger triptych, I try to make each panel completely autonomous, meaning that each panel has to stand alone as a painting.  Each has to have its own focal point and be complete as a self-contained scene.  However, with the smaller size of the panels I drop that criteria somewhat because the width of vision for the viewer is already condensed.  The side panels still are complete but they have little in the way of focal points in themself.

The overall feel for this piece has a real sense of completion.  The attention is all funneled to the central panel and while the side panels may not be exciting as individual paintings, they have a feeling of rightness in the whole. 

I’ll be working  on a larger triptych soon, perhaps with non-symetrical panels which changes again the way the composition comes together.  I will probably opt for color in the larger piece.  Maybe not.  Who knows?

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Come To Light

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged , , on September 16, 2010| 2 Comments »

This is a painting that I recently completed (now at the Haen Gallery, Asheville) that is another example of a piece that evolved as I worked into something that I didn’t originally envision for it.

This 20″ by 30″ canvas was started at the end of 2009 and I thought at first that it would be a piece with my typical Red Tree at the front of the picture plane.  But as I painted, the composition began to shift and where I thought the tree might be n longer seemed feasible.  It would be awkward and out of rhythm.  I had painted myself out of what I had first imagined. 

And I couldn’t see where it would go from there.  No matter how I looked at it, I couldn’t see where it could possibly go.  I liked very much what I had painted thus far.  The layers of earth were sharp and organic in feel.  The color was right on– rich and complex with many layers.  But it seemed to have reached a dead-end.

So it sat for a long time.  About nine monthes. I would look and look at it yet it stumped me.  It was a puzzle and I couldn’t figure out a solution.

But one day I took the canvas from where it had been sitting, just to the right of my work table.  I began to see an answer to the question and began to work feverishly on the background and the sky, adding the water, tree and sun.  I changed the whole focus of the piece and began to see it come it together.  It could work and,  in the end, it did work for me.  It went from being a conunmdrum to being what I see as a strong and bold piece.

It just took a little time for the answers to come to light.  The title of the piece is, by the way, Come To Light.

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A Look to the Past

Posted in Recent Paintings, tagged , on June 8, 2010| Leave a Comment »

This is a new painting from the Facets show that opens Friday at the Principle Gallery.  It’s called A Look to the Past and is a 12″ by 18″ image on paper.

There are a lot of things about this piece that I like, that keep my eyes coming back to it and making me think about what I’m seeing.  For instance, the deep blue rise that  cuts in a diagonal slash across the foreground with the peering red tree atop it.  Its darkness plays well off the soft gold of the sky and its lazy clouds, giving it a sense of being a delineating point here, the transition between dark and light, the past and the present and other polarities in our nature.  Much like the dividing line in the yin-yang symbol.

The red tree seems to be part of both sides here, rooted in the dark blue and basking in the golden light.  It is in the present and in the past as well, which is represented by the softer palette of the greens and yellows of the landscape that moves deeper into the picture plane.  There’s a really nice interplay between the sharpness of the foreground and the softening of the background that gives the piece an interesting visual tension.

It just seems to come together well and provides a launching pad for many different interpretations and emotions.  I can read this piece in so many ways– hopeful, strong, sad, wistful, etc.   It’s a kind of barometer piece for ones own psyche and has a complexity that belies its simple appearance, something that gratifies and excites me when I see it in my work.   The ultimate aspiration for what I do…

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