oil on canvasMore gumballs! Well, they're not really gumballs, but they do make me think of the game of guessing how many jelly beans are in a jar. The dots are compressed toward the picture plane, accentuating the surface of the canvas. The edging on three sides sets them back a bit, setting up a dialogue between in vs. out, the world of circles as opposed to something else.
Dots of fall treetops are layered on the bottom like piles of leaves while the second fourth of the painting shows the darker structure of bare trees. The third fourth is made up of blue and white (falling snow or cool air?), while the upper fourth is an attempt at the many varieties of crystalline blue there are no paints for (sigh). The height of the canvas compared to width is important as the circles are like bubbles. They have a good enough length to travel and convey their effervescence. When looking at the actual painting (I'm not sure it works in the jpeg) one's eyes dilate, getting lost in the movement, stimulated by the bouncing color.
For all the special effects computers offer in pixelization and making things random, less mechanical, more naturalistic, a computer could not make this painting. I work intuitively, sometimes impulsively, and sometimes calculated. I think the location and color of the dots (or other design elements I use in other pictures) end up conveying my personal energy and the feeling I am expressing. A friend's parent in 1989, when I was in high school and deciding to go to art school to study painting laughed at my decision, saying that computers would make all the art of the future. It is like saying we would happily accept the superiority of the machines we create. Our souls could give up, obsolete.
No comments:
Post a Comment