skip to main |
skip to sidebar
...I need to tie a string around my brush or something, to remind me to post here! I've really fallen behind, this time. Added to my works since Green & White No. 2 are Green & White No. 3 & 4, as well as the start of a new series, Burnt Sienna & White, followed by six new additions to the Black & White series, four additions to the White series, the latest two in the Blue & Purple series, six more additions to the Brown & White series, and a couple of new entries to the Orange & White series.
The casual viewer may get the impression, as Denise Lassaw (daughter of sculptor Ibram Lassaw), a great artist in her own right, did, that my paintings are, as she has said, "...too similar." Well, yes, they are. That is the result of my process and I'm a process-oriented painter, so that will tend to be the case, as I've said here before.
What I'm attempting to do is to build a cohesive body of work that has a certain unity and which is unmistakably mine. To that end, I believe I'm doing rather well. By confining my work - at least, for the time being, anyway; I do intend to work on canvas again and at a larger scale, later in the year - to a set surface (paper), format (portrait) and size (8.5"x11"), the only variables left for me to work within are (1) the type of paint, (2) the tools I'm using, (3) the colors I've selected and (4) the angle, direction, length and velocity of the strokes I make, either with my brushes (for the ground plane) or with the knife. Within these confines, though, I find a myriad of possibilities.
Even so, yes, there is a degree of sameness from one image to the next and I make no apologies for this, as it's fully intentional. First of all, I'm developing a style of my own - one that I hope is as uniquely mine as my signature is. To that end, the process I'm using serves me well, especially since I don't see anyone else painting in the same way I am. That's a good thing. If I were doing what everyone else is doing, what would there be to distinguish myself with? By using the process I started in the late eighties, abandoned for a while and then picked up again last year, and further developing it, I have found that I can create a body of work that is uniquely my own and it is because of the process that drives it.
But the main factor driving the similarity from one painting to the next, aside from confining myself to the set of variables I've listed above, is my own unique stroke. There are certain repetitions of patterns I've used - either consciously or not - that have established a sort of visual vocabularly that I am the only speaker of. From time to time, when I become more conscious of what I'm doing (or about to do), I'll deliberately change my angle of attack or where I place the paint on the paper, just to get away from what I've been doing and to create a different pattern. Even then, though, I find myself returning to the same alternate patterns. So, after noticing my knife had begun leaving marks and lines in the paint, simply from lack of proper cleaning (the dried paint tends to accumulate at the knife edge and this drags through the paint surface, leaving tracks in it), I decided I liked the look and began consciously incorporating deliberate lines into my paintings, which echo the general direction and path of my previous knife strokes. I've done this for no other reason than that I like the look and it adds yet another visual element of interest to direct the eye of the viewer. I suppose that's why I liked it, myself. So, what I am doing is as much a process of self-discovery as it is a process of painting. I am in a feedback loop, so to speak, interacting with the evidence of my own actions. But, doesn't this happen for all artists, to an extent, regardless of their chosen medium?
Okay, I'm back on track with my postings, now, at least, for today, anyway. Here is yesterday's output: Green & White No. 1 and Green & White No. 2. This continues the concept of using a single color on a white ground, as I've been doing, lately - and have been doing, off and on, since I began doing these small paintings on paper, back in mid-October (the point at which I went from the 14"x17" paper format to the 8.5"x11" cardstock I've been using since). Actually, I started the single color on a white ground before then. Anyway, I'm continuing in that vein, lately, trying some combinations I hadn't yet explored, and these two are the latest, as of Monday.
I selected Thalo Green as the color for my foreground knifework in this series, simply because I was too low on Permanent Green to complete a pair of paintings yesterday. So, you see, we artists make some of our decisions based upon the most mundane and practical of matters, not always out of some mystical visionary revelation that came to us in the middle of the night. I hate to break it to you, but that's probably more often the case than not.
Anyway, the Thalo Green wouldn't have been my preference of greens, if I'd had adequate supplies on hand, as it tends to be too dark when in its fully concentrated form; i.e., when it's spread thickly. The only places where the color green really becomes apparent, where it really "reads" as a green, are in those areas that are spread more thinly over the white ground. In this respect, the Permanent Green would have been a better choice, as it's more readily seen as green, whether spread thick or thin.
Having said that, I'll now address the green in the ground, which is obviously not pure white, for a reason. Yes, I did do that deliberately! As I've been doing all along, I paint my grounds starting with an underpainting of either the same color I'll be using for the knifework, or I use another shade of the same color. In some cases, I'll use a Nutmeg Brown underpainting, even if I'm not using brown as my knifework color. In this case, the underpainting is Hooker's Green. As usual, I have scumbled the dominant ground color (white, in this case) over the underpainting, very loosely and rapidly, with the idea in mind of allowing the underpainting to show through, here and there. That's how the rich variety of visual textures are created in the ground plane. Sometimes, as I'm doing this, I have the thought of someone watching me do it and saying to me, "Oh, you missed a spot!" To which I'd reply, "Yes, I did, and quite intentionally, too!" Now you know why I paint alone. ;)
The whole idea is to create a painting that has something there to keep the viewer's eyes constantly moving.
If the whole painting is immediately apprehended at first glance, the viewer will lose interest almost right away. Since I have no recognizable subject matter to grab and hold a viewer's interest, I am forced to grab their attention and hold it with the very paint, itself, or, rather, with how the paint is handled. Thus, you see how it is that my work is all about the paint, how it's handled and it's relationship to the surface (the paper, in this case). This sort of explains why minimalism has never found a very large or enthusiastic audience, doesn't it? If the painting is all one color, without any variation in the color and no texture at all, the whole painting is taken in at a single moment's glance - and then the viewer is off to look at another painting.
I recently viewed an online gallery that consisted entirely of several minimalist painters' works, and everything there looked pretty much the same - not only within each painter's portfolio, but from painter to painter. Unless you looked very closely, you'd swear the webmaster had simply copied and pasted the same images into each artist's page, over and over again. The only standouts were those who were daring enough to depart from the conventional canvas support and try painting on sheet metal (steel or aluminum, I think), letting the reflective properties of the metal show through the transparently applied paint. These were the most interesting pieces displayed there.
Like a well written song, a painting needs to have its "hooks" - those little elements that, when combined together, grab and holder the listener's or, in the case of paintings, the viewer's attention and won't let go. So, that's part of what I am striving to create in my paintings. To the extent that I do so is the extent to which they succeed, in my opinion.
