.jpg)
Untitled Diptych (Yellow, Blue, Green), egg tempera on calfskin parchment;
2 panels, each 6 3/4 x 2 7/8 in.
I like the idea of a diptych, with two panels, similar yet different, having a conversation across a small gap. I've done several, though not for a couple of years. Because I had some small pieces of scrap plywood, I thought I'd use them for diptychs instead of discarding them.
El Lissitzky, Proun 1C, 1919; oil and metal foil on plywood, 26 3/4 x 26 3/4 in.
My idea for the composition partly came from seeing this El Lissitsky at the show "Inventing Abstraction" at MoMA, which I wrote about here. I was fascinated by the forms leaving the edges of the painting, so included a blue cylinder dropping off the bottom right. I enjoy painting the sensuous curves of cloth, and seeing them contrasted with the more geometric forms. I still have no sense of the quality of this new series of still life paintings, but they interest me enough to keep on with them for now. I have not given up on my other paintings, of images derived from farm machinery; just one more of these and then back to the machines. As I go back and forth between the two bodies of work, I hope to have more of a sense of where I'm going with them.
Untitled Diptych detail
Untitled Diptych detail
Above are two details from this new painting. I like to show details in the hope that they give a better sense of the paint, but of course everything tends to be flattened out online. There is a subtle sense of touch, of paint, in my work, but it is quiet and reserved; the hand is evident, but restrained. Of primary importance to me is the tangibility of the thing portrayed: I want shape and form to present itself, solid, as though real, catching light and casting shadows.
It's beautiful, Altoon!! I love it <3
ReplyDeleteThese are wonderful.
ReplyDeleteThanks so much, Josée and CMC.
ReplyDeleteThese paintings are clearly a continuation of the ongoing dialogue in your painting between form, space and the formal. I think you expressed it quite well in yur interview in Hyperallergic - "I had made some attempts at nonobjective painting, but they were failures; I continue to be very tied to the resonance and depth of depicting things of this world in my painting and to the frisson of pleasure that comes from the illusion of the tangible." Like the diptych very much!
ReplyDeleteThank you very much, Robert; much appreciated!
DeleteThis is a lovely pair and seems not dissimilar to some of the fiber compositions and prints you've been doing. A very successful combination of repeated forms yet asymmetrical combinations.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ms Wis. I agree that there's a connection between this and other bodies of work I've been doing; it's interesting to have these correspondences.
Delete