Heart Strings

Heart Strings 

24" x 18" - acrylic on canvas - $150

Following my recent experience with painting in a 'non-representational' way, I wanted to try to work larger. This is the final result after many weeks of going back and forth and trying not to stress about where it was going or how I felt. I started by just drawing lines and shapes with a black paint marker and then adding colour and then letting it sit, and thinking about what to do with the bits I didn't like. I am glad that I kept going because I love the finished painting, and love looking at it. Though it doesn't look like what I 'normally' paint I think that is just fine. I truly believe in the need to grow, experiment, change and take risks in art making, despite the set-backs that may arise. It's so much more fun that way. Cheers!

Below are some process pics......

Hot Flash

Hot Flash

12" x 12" - acrylic on canvas - $65

This is the second panel of what I thought was going to be a landscape triptych, but is now a stand alone work. I settled on this composition and colour scheme quite quickly and really liked the mass of trees and tree canopy, suggested through lots of blacks lines, more easily seen in the detail below.... 

 And I have to add here that it was difficult adjust the reds, oranges and pinks in the photo of this painting. I did my best to get something that was accurate, but I have to say, that the actual painting in life, is much better!

Turning Up the Heat

Turning Up the Heat

12" x 12" - acrylic on canvas - SOLD

Last week I decided to work on a triptych and 'create' a landscape, rather than base it on any particular place. My initial loose and crazy drawing across all three panels was exciting as was the colour scheme - reds, pink, oranges and yellows. At different points, parts of each panel were great, but as I continued to paint (overpaint) one of them became more problematic. (Note that I am not even showing these panels!) Eventually, I saw that the three compositions did not work together, and one was a write-off. This is one of the two, now individual paintings, I completed and am pretty happy with. 

Landscape Syncopation

Landscape Syncopation

24" x 20" - acrylic on canvas - SOLD

This work was inspired by the photo below, taken several summers ago at a friend's cottage in Ontario. 

Since then I have made several attempt to interpret it, but none really felt right. Until recently. In the first process shots below (left) I basically had a composition and some colour down, but I didn't want to stay so literal. In the second photo (right) I was trying to abstract the trees more, and chunk up the colour/value shapes of the sky, land, and water and connect them with the trees. 

The more I painted and enlarged the colour/value shapes I became happier and excited, adding more linear black lines and repetitive smaller geometric shapes within the larger ones. It became a process of obliterating but leaving traces of what had been there. I loved what I was seeing emerge. My challenge of course was to not over-work the surface and I think I succeeded. 

When finished it reminded me of Piet Mondrian's "Broadway Boogie Woogie" from 1942-43, hanging in MOMA in NYC. The gallery's label explains that Mondrian "was fascinated by jazz and  boogie woogie music in particular", which was known for its syncopated rhythms. 

"In music, syncopation involves a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected, making part or all of a tune or piece of music off-beat. More simply, syncopation is "a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of rhythm......Syncopation can also occur when a strong harmony is placed on a weak beat....".  

I think syncopation appears in my painting through the repetitive and rhythmic arrangement of small and large geometric shapes that together form the landscape elements, but also seem to move or hover on the surface, and act like small abstract compositions within the larger one.