Monday, March 9, 2009

"White" Vase


I'm trying to keep my goal of a picture a week. This was done on Sunday. I do know if I continue posting and publishing my art, I will have to have better reproduction equipment. The colors are just not right, but at least it gives an idea. For example, the far right corner contains my signature on a red fabric stripe. You can't see it at all. But even with those limitations, this was by far the most confident attempt. I love the stripes, the strong patterns, bold colors and the way acrylic handles. I have continued studying the Post Impressionists and now The Fauves. They were the next group of painters to come along, including Henri Matisse and Andre Derain. The Fauves, or "Wild Beasts", used their own color systems. They did not necessarily, or even never, use local color. Skies were yellow, grass blue-whatever suited the pictorial harmony. Now they were representational painters, which means they painted the observed world, boats, landscapes, figures...but the color was used in a more emotional vernacular, which is what I'm trying to get at, while remaining true to realism. I was also studying Wayne Thiebaud, and I loved one quote out of his book just simply titled with his name,"The simultaneous reading of depth and flatness in paintings...reflects Thiebaud's grappling with the dilemma that faces all modern painters: how to reconcile three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface without adhering to the concept of pictorial space defined in the Renaissance". Yes, uh huh, that's right, Wayne! It's hard. My solution was, let color define shapes only as much as is needed for contrast and separation. The green vase is actually bronze, but the local color did not help my composition. The stripes served as a secondary dissolve into patterning that was not necessary dimensional, and the final horizon of background was my original drip and splattered imprimatura. There are planes of reality, and my thing is, let them coexist. They don't have to be formally reconciled. Isn't that true of the physical and spiritual worlds?

2 comments:

  1. I went through "modernist" influences ( I don't have 'em as particularized as you do: "post-modern" opposed to "modern,"..whatever), but I do remember the Fauves and the freedom of color expression provided therefrom. I'm especially impressed by your absorption of Wayne Theibaud, and feel that you have made this 'your own,' so to speak. In "White Vase" you have articulated this quite well. You got the tension between three dimensional illusion and flat pattern arrangement just right in this one. Good, very good work.

    Kudos on getting an art blog going, and I am honored to be on your blogroll of related.
    I'm gonna put this on my page, for sure.

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  2. Thanks...it's trial and error, but I've painted for a long time, and know that I simply wouldn't be satisfied with a strict photorealist approach. That's what really causes me to question postmodern "exploration" of realism-is it that, or just derivative of photography for it's own sake? I can't deal with that. I feel certainly that we've lost something here, the underpinnings of art principles and interpretation based on things other than strict observation of what is seen by the eye? It takes more-for me art is so exciting because it DOES, or should, require more!

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