Where Painting Meets Sculpture
Jul 28, 2010 On my Easel
When does painting become sculpture? I have no idea, but perhaps I’ll find out!
I’ve been doing a lot of work on my abstract art recently. I’m working on a new series that involves the re-arranging of a canvas cut into 25 squares. As the paintings progress, they’re becoming more and more three dimensional. They began as layers of wood, but I’m experimenting with putting spacers between the layers, creating more depth.
Part of my strategy is working on more than one piece at a time. This lets me play with different ideas and different colour schemes while working within the same parameters.
To read more about my process and thoughts about this piece, visit the news page at my abstract art site. I’m going to be treating this section as a blog, updating it when I finish new paintings and talking about my approach to my abstract work.
To keep up with my abstract art, you can also subscribe to the RSS feed or my newsletter.
I’m finishing up three other abstract pieces based on a red/orange colour scheme, working on two smaller, monochromatic pieces and a larger contrasting piece. My studio has taken over the entire house and it’s great!
Tags: acrylic painting
Juxtaposition: Abstract Acrylic and Realistic Oil
Apr 27, 2010 On my Easel
Sometimes, working on two very different projects can be interesting.
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted about what’s on my easel, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been busy!
The other day I was working in the studio. When I stepped back, I saw these two paintings side by side and realized what a cool juxtaposition they made! They are completely different, opposites in more than one respect, and yet they relate to each other.
I like to pick out parallels between works that don’t seem to have anything in common. Here we have a blue, abstract, geometric painting in acrylic on the left, and an orange, realistic, oil painting on the right. Looking at them together makes it easy to see the similarities: bright, saturated colour, crisp lines, flat shapes. All the things that interest me!
It’s interesting because the dominant colours are not only opposites on the colour wheel, they are my two favorite colours. When trying a new technique or working with a new medium, I will always reach for either orange or blue. I am drawn to blue because it’s such a versatile colour, and to orange because of its intensity.
This piece is a continuation, almost a distillation, of the work I was doing earlier this year. Before, I was deconstructing paintings that I had completed as finished works.
Here, I have started with a sheet of gessoed canvas and painted flat, geometric shapes. Then I cut the canvas into 25 squares, as I did before, re-arranged them and painted more squares. The squares were glued to a piece of board, which was then torn apart.
This process combines the shapes and colours of my constructed paintings with the form and process of my reincarnated paintings.
The African sunset is actually a commission. My friend is getting married this summer and has asked me to do this painting, which will hang behind the bride and groom at the reception. The entire wedding will be African themed, hence the African sunset.
For this painting, I did everything right! I did a colour study and a value study to make sure I worked out any problems before digging into the real thing. This really helped me to achieve the illumination of the sun and to understand how to paint the shadows properly. If you go to my portrait website, you can see the painting studies as well as work-in-progress shots of the painting.
People seem to think it’s strange that I do both tight, realistic work and geometric abstractions. I stand by my theory that each is necessary to me, rewarding and challenging different parts of my brain. Especially when you see the two styles together, it’s evident that each informs the other.
Do you work in more than one style? How does that affect your art?
Tags: abstract, acrylic painting, oil painting, paintings
Merry Christmas!
Dec 25, 2009 On my Easel, Special Bulletins
To my readers, friends and family:
Thank you for all your support and feedback as I got this site up and running earlier this year!
Merry Christmas to everyone and a Happy New Year!
Tags: messages
My Latest, Greatest Portrait Commission
Dec 23, 2009 On my Easel
After being holed up in my house for the past four days, I have finally finished my last Christmas commission of the year!
I was contacted about two weeks ago by Alan, who wanted to know if it was too late for a portrait. I told him of course it wasn’t; then he told me he wanted a drawing of his entire family of twelve people and their dog! I have to admit, I hummed and hawed a bit. I knew I could do it, I just wasn’t sure if I could fit it into my schedule along with my own Christmas stuff.
In the end, I had to say yes. It was a special circumstance and I very much wanted to help Alan make this work!
It was a couple days before we were able to meet, choose photographs and hammer out a composition. Alan wanted a large portrait of his wife, surrounded by smaller pictures of his family. Basically, the drawing was to be all about his wife, with everyone else supporting her.
In the end, it took about thirty-five hours of drawing, countless revisions, and at least fifteen different photos to complete this! I used one photo for each of the small figures (some I used a second photo to reference certain facial features). Alan’s wife was made up of a combination of three pictures: one for the face, one for the body, and a third for the mouth.
Long story short, I have been working on this drawing to the exclusion of almost everything else! I haven’t seen Twitter in days, haven’t updated my Facebook page, and haven’t been able to check out my favorite blogs. My house is a shambles, there’s no food in the fridge and I have about six hours of laundry to do. Today, I left my house for the first time in three days!
As much as I’m glad to be done, it has been a pleasure working with Alan on this project. I think it turned out amazingly well and I hope his wife absolutely loves it!
Experimenting with Deconstruction and Another Portrait
Dec 11, 2009 On my Easel
As usual, I’m working on a couple of projects. A major theme lately has been portraits. I’ve been super busy because of Christmas. I thought I was working on my last commission of the year when I was approached about one more.
It’s a last minute request, and a big one. I am doing a large portrait of an entire family, twelve people in total. I’m still not sure how big the drawing will be, it all depends on the size of the faces. I meet with the client tomorrow to discuss details. It’s kind of a special request that I might not have taken otherwise. Assuming I can get started tomorrow, I’m going to have to draw at least one face a day to finish it before Christmas. Not impossible, but it means I’m going to have to manage my time very well!
In the meantime, this is the drawing that I need to finish before I start my big project. This drawing is for my boss, Dana. She previously commissioned a portrait of her partner running a marathon. These are her kids and this will be a Christmas gift for her mother!
I’ve had a little bit of time to work on some abstract pieces lately too. One idea I’m really excited about is the idea of deconstructing wooden furniture and turning it into an art object. What interests me about this is the idea that the arrangement of pieces is what makes an object what it is. By taking it apart and rearranging it, it stops being an object, even though all the pieces are still present.
My other venture has been the deconstruction of my paintings on canvas (as in the first picture). These works had kind of stalled and had started feeling un-interesting to me. The act and process of painting them was a very valuable experience for me, but as art the paintings weren’t doing much. I started by cutting a canvas into twenty-five squares and re-arranging them. The act of gluing down and ripping up stretched the canvas, creating an interesting texture. I’m still not sure where I’m going with this, but it’s always liberating to destroy your own work!
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