Project Type: Paintings I made

Forming a pattern

Update 8/15

Actually began this piece a couple of months ago and have been remiss to get a post up about it. My practice does tend to be quite traditional- sketches lead to studies lead to pieces that lead towards the next direction to follow- and this one is no different. In part it’s taking in some of the lessons from a larger piece I did last year, and is directionally steered from the study at the top left.

Generally, the intention with this piece was to break up the structure with some negative space, increase the tonal tension between it and the cubes, and create dissonance through randomness and chroma that competes with a some subtle and fairly homogenous treatments for the majority of the cubes. I think this one is all done except for the stretching but I like to sit with “finished” pieces for a bit.

Time to make the choices

Final5/14

In addition to reflecting on my use of tools for the piece this post documents*, I’ve also noted the importance that studies have taken in my process over the last few months. This piece is based on the study shown top left below. I’ll note that this piece also incorporates a theme of recycling compositions- in this case the one associated with the stretcher that I’ll be re-using. One new element will be using the projector at later stages to create a template for shifting the grid slightly before repeating it.

Similar to another piece I recently completed, I found after I got into the painting that a rectangular container was probably not the right choice. While using some blue painter’s tape to sketch out potential canvas stretcher shapes, I stumbled into another solution which is to paint the container. Very pleased with not only the resulting compositional addition but also with the way the lighter purple around the edges of the painting wraps the edge of the stretcher and optically obfuscates the edge.

*I’ve also reflected on how the inflection points of the journey, even when I intellectualize them as choices that result in a major shift, aren’t always clean breaks.

Always tinkering

Final 2/19

Been wanting to revisit some of the characteristics and qualities I saw in an earlier work at pre-completion stage (the first images of a painting below which became this finished piece) as the studies I’ve been doing make me think color, tone and line more. Obviously going a bit more vibrant this time…

As soon as I got the drawing onto the canvas, I recognized a strong diagonal from lower left to upper right. I responded by cutting a stretcher for this one that has 2 corners that are slightly obtuse. Spent some the time on this piece working out which edge to make square to the room (middle rows in the gallery below), ended up settling on the top edge.

I decided the cartoon line needed to be a light tone which I think makes it more of a distinct compositional element. I also added a thick isolation layer which gave some underlying texture to the final applications for all the cube “faces” that for now appear orange, and decided that the tone and chroma of the oranges should vary slightly.

Pleased with the final result, which has also surfaced another challenge with shaped canvases which is photographing them. Normally, with a rectangular stretcher with square corners, I’d just shoot them in daylight, crop out the background in photo editing software, and call it good. Shaped canvases present another challenge, for which I invested in a 5000+ kelvin studio light that I’ll also use to take pictures of assemblage pieces and cubes.