Playing Catch-Up Again

Oops! Got behind again. Here's my latest: a new series, Burnt Sienna & White; six new additions to the Black & White series and four additions to the White series.

Green & White No. 1 & 2

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.

More New Works

Here I go, catching up on my blogging again. This time, I'm adding the two latest additions to my Blue on Orange series, No. 3 & 4; a new series, Brown on White and another new series, Orange on White.

Blue on Blue and Brown on Orange

These are my latest additions to the Blue on Blue and Brown on Orange series; Blue on Blue No. 3 and 4, and Brown on Orange No. 3 and 4. That makes a total of 14 new paintings in the first six days of the new year.

Behind Again

Here we go again! Here are the first two of a new series titled Blue on Blue, the first two of yet another new series titled Brown on Orange, then there is Yellow No. 5 and Yellow No. 6, and, lastly, the first two of another new series, started last night, titled Blue on Orange (not to be confused with my earlier series Blue & Orange).

Catching Up...Again

I'm finally catching up, here, after falling way behind in my posting. I've added several new paintings since the Red White & Blue series, and these are four new additions to the Brown series; the first two paintings in a new series titled Brown Green Yellow Ochre; the first three of another new series, titled Brown & Green; the first two in yet another new series, titled Brown & Red; two new additions to my Blue & Orange series; four additions to the Green & Magenta series; two new additions to the White on Blue series; the first four of another new series, titled Yellow, and the first four of yet another new series, titled Orange.

These new paintings, save for the latest two paintings in the Orange Series (Orange No. 3 and Orange No. 4), can be found under "2008" on the newly redesigned website. I have made a fresh start for 2009 and have archived my entire output for 2008 under the link "2008," oddly enough. There you will find all the content that was there before.

Meanwhile, the new 2009 version of the site features my painting, Green & Magenta No. 7 on the opening page. The site has been reorganized for 2009, to reflect the direction I'm headed in, lately; i.e., exclusively focused on creating small paintings on paper for reproduction. Gone is the page for paintings on canvas, at least for now, anyway. As I don't think it would make much sense to have an empty page for that, I'll wait until I've done some new paintings on canvas before I add that page back to the new site design. So, until then, it's just the small paintings on paper and the prints you can order of them.

There are only two new paintings, so far, for 2009, but, this being only the first day of the new year, you can expect rapid growth ahead, given my prodigious output between August and the end of 2008.

Now that I have arrived at a well defined style and process, you can expect it to continue and I have many ideas I have yet to try out; different color palettes, and so forth. Also, I am eager to produce some new paintings on canvas, which will be the first to be produced in this style. Those I did last year were precursors to what I am doing now and I am anxious to see how well the compositions I've done at 8.5"x11" on paper translate to canvases in the range of 24"x30" to 30"x40" and larger. The technique will be the same, though the quantities of paint and the size of my tools will increase to accommodate the increase in scale. The hold-up is due to economics, with the economy the way it is, but I will eventually get to it later on - unless the economy completely collapses, that is.