This is a study, completed last summer, for a painting that was going to be 18 x 50 inches, rather large and dramatic. The panel for this work is sitting in my studio, awaiting its gesso coating. But since making the three small works on vellum––see here, here, and here–– which were fun and exciting to work on, I feel that I want to have a different physical relationship with my paintings, and a different way of composing them. Coming up with the images for the miniatures by cropping details of much larger photographs allowed me to play more with shape and design and took me farther from the source material, in a good way. It took me closer to abstraction––a long term and continuing goal––and farther from the actual object; another way to put this is that it helped me to feel more free.
My solution of the 'what to do with the big yellow study' question is a diptych, with each panel 6 inches square, the images taken from the photos I took at the time I did the study. Above is the painting in its beginning stage. It's another triangles and curves , but more mysterious, I think. I am still very much interested in refined description of form, color, and detail–– "realism"––but it is not in the service of telling a story about an object, but to provide a sense of the tangible, perhaps even moving into the uncanny. After painting the miniatures, I feel that I can come closer to this aim by working small, which seems concentrated and intensified; this is very different from the dramatic impact of a large painting. All these thoughts are quite new, and I need to complete many more works before I understand what is actually going on (see "Uncertainty") but the newness is a thrill, and makes the studio a place of adventure.
dynamic duo. very cubist. using a detail as a whole implicates a whole - speaks of being part of a larger, while asserting itself as separate. I think it's a special category of abstraction, do you?
ReplyDeleteInteresting question, rappel. I wonder if I didn't write about the image being pulled from a larger one, if it would be so evident. But let's say it is clear, in part because of the realistic style, then yes, it's a different variety of abstraction. Rather than simplifying a whole, as in, let's say, Picasso's analytic abstractions or American modernist painting (since they often dealt with machines), I'm taking away context to make the image abstract. I think the closest art to this is the photography that focuses on finding interest in parts of a thing, such as Siskind's walls.
ReplyDeleteThe study has a lovely, dynamic feel: wing & weight.
ReplyDeleteBut I think the abstraction will work better if you seperate the diptych and let them stand alone. The tension between the two feels unresolved.
I had thought the play between the two panels was interesting, Julie, especially with the large curve, right and left, which mirror each other. But you may be right in that the blue-gray area on the right has no echo on the left, so perhaps separates the two images too much to make a pair. On the other hand, there are all those triangles creating a rhythm.
ReplyDeleteLove it -as simple as that. If there's anything to add it's a quibble and a small one at that. For me the dynamic of the image works from right to left and the 'weight' on the bottom right-hand side is not heavy enough to slow down the eye at it travels across the width of the image. The acceleration to the left seems so much faster in relation to the right that the center seems more 'fragile'.
ReplyDeletetony, such an interesting eye you have. Since this is the work in progress, I wonder what you'd think of the finished work, which you can see on the post "Yellow Whorls". I think you might be correct on the issue of weight on the lower right; even though I made the area yellow instead of gray, perhaps the contrast could have been stronger to make it "heavier".
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