October 31, 2011

A New Painting: "Partnered"

Partnered, egg tempera on calfskin parchment, 4 1/2 x 5 5/8 inches.


Partnered, dark and dramatic, is very different from the bright simplicity of my last painting White Triangle. It is not a flat image, as are many of my paintings, but is seen from below and has a form thrusting out toward the picture plane. I like working on very different kinds of compositions, so as to constantly challenge myself, and in order to explore a range of moods and feelings. It might seem strange to think of paintings of farm implements as having feeling, but I certainly hope that they do, just as non-objective painting does.




In this detail you can get a sense of the surface of the parchment and of the paint. Matter of fact, I had a hard time photographing without glare; I have a new camera which wants to pick up every teeny surface imperfection. The background color that you see is darker than I'd originally painted; I wanted to heighten the drama, the sense of lighted forms emerging from gloom. This painting is the first in a series of three that picture handles of some sort, a theme that appeared, unbidden, among my photographs.

6 comments:

  1. Lisa at GreenbowOctober 31, 2011 at 7:35 PM

    I can just see some farmer trying to reach up there a shift that lever. Well done.

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  2. Philip KochOctober 31, 2011 at 7:41 PM

    This is a wonderfully moody painting. Nicely done!

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  3. rappelOctober 31, 2011 at 8:26 PM

    such drama! but well staged. if these forms were brightly colored I would see the gesture as comic - but here, a slight but painful rebuttal is depicted. I say this knowing that nothing of the sort is being depicted, it's my own imagination participating in my visual experience - isn't this what keeps art alive?

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  4. Altoon SultanOctober 31, 2011 at 8:50 PM

    thanks so much, Lisa and Philip and rappel. I love reading that you see this as drama, and love thinking, as rappel suggests, of this as painted in bright yellow and orange and how different it would be: comic indeed. And hurrah to visual imagination.

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  5. Susan SawyerNovember 1, 2011 at 9:47 PM

    Drama! was my first thought, too. And I love that yellow/dark yellow/olive green/real gold group of colors.

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  6. Altoon SultanNovember 2, 2011 at 8:20 AM

    thank you, Susan. I had fun mixing those colors, keeping the greens warm in hue.

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