Web

Moving right along with another work completed in my Reading a Garden series. You could get lost in the intricacy of this one. I've been painting it for months when the mood hit me. It isn't the kind of painting you can execute in a week. The vines draw you into their maze.

When I came across this vine clinging to the side of a stone wall I was reminded of circuits, wires etc. . The sending of information is part of life in the natural and man made world. Plants have life pathways just as humans do. Sometimes these pathways wither and new ones grow, information is re-routed, the job of growth continues.

When I imagine the world wide web, I conjure up this kind of image of lines going off is all directions, layered and complicated.

Breaking rules

You are never really alone in your studio if you have an art blog and pose a question. I find this aspect of blogging so helpful. I appreciate the time my readers take to participate in any discussion that is prompted by my posts. My last post is a perfect example of contemplative input from my readers. I struggled with this painting to move it beyond an ordinary floral painting and provide something new for the viewer to consider. This intent drove me to break rules that are pretty basic in composition. Never lead the eye out of the top of the composition with strong vertical lines.

There's always a but.... I drove the eye up to consider the aspect of daylight and the connection. I added textural elements with organic overtones to connect the daylight with the plant and its growth. My intention was to stop the eye with texture and move it around rather than out.
Don stated it very eloquently...
"I get the sense of the flower starting its day in its infancy growing thru the day into its glorious maturity at which point it suddenly shatters against the ceiling of its short lifespan. My last impression ends there, since nothing takes me back into the composition to show this cycle recurring. We only get one shot at life...

Do I leave it there or do I provide some hope for remaking ourselves? I'm torn.

While one particular daylily has a short life of glorious bloom and withers, they, like most plants, live through cyclical rotations and I love them for this passage of hope. I feel a need to provide a subtle route for the eye back down to begin the cycle of consideration again - through fiddling with the right top side.

I'm still toying with some dark webbing texture at the bottom of the painting.... it content v.s. composition. Time will tell. More hanging in front of my painting table and movement around the house.

Something tells me that this work will get a lot of consideration in the next while. I have a 24 x 36 inch board staring back at me and I'm scared by the 864 square inches of space. My largest painting to date has been 20 x 24. I'm challenging myself. Nothing's happened so far. Gesso would be a safe bet and a wash of yellow. How is that for commitment?

A solution

This particular painting, which no longer exists in this way, was causing me problems. I was dissatisfied with the composition at the top and I could not seem to get it to reflect what originally drew me to the topic - the temporality of the daylily with its one day lifespan. As a painting I found my attempt somewhat boring and it didn't live up to the level of "sophistication" I had achieved in some of the other paintings in the series. When I presented this work in an earlier post, I had several excellent suggestions from my readers, all of which I took under advisement. They helped to get me thinking.








This is what the painting now looks like. It either works or it doesn't work at all. My solutions are usually like that. I reach a point where I just say "Go for it!" As for a title... maybe Daybreak

Comments greatly appreciated especially those of a critical nature...

Gains and Losses

Gains and Losses, 2006

Sometimes I create work that is a departure from what has gone before it. I never stop to question if I should pursue these ideas because I've learned to trust my instincts. It's also important to recognize what these departures mean in the context of your larger body of work. Gains and Losses represents a number of firsts for me in terms of technique and content considerations.

Technique

stenciling
obvious layering
utilizing floating patterning
forays into image transfers
use of elaborately printed papers and gold paint
change in colour scheme to rich browns and golds.

I had just returned from a long holiday in Italy and was influenced by everything I had seen. The colours of Italy remain with me even now and they obviously had an impact on the overall look and feel of this piece.

Inspiration

Italy
lavish gardens,
churches and art museums,
brocades, gilt, velvet, Venetian glass
ochres, rich browns, gold, copper and brass
history nodding to you at every twist and turn
producing a deep sense of how the world came to be
wondering how my world fits with this older, more exotic one.

In 2006 I was reading widely about the history of floral imagery in art, beauty and the passage of time. All have impacted this work. I chose to use split images to physically represent the passage of time . The left is much more focused and vivid than the right. I was going for lushness and that eventual slide into decay, again a reflection of the passage of time. The figure represents a time in the lives of women when independence and choice where almost non-existent. This was a lady of means who could afford to primp and beautify to please . Fresh flowers adorned her dress creating parallel representations of beauty caught at one moment in time but neither can defy the inevitable toll that time takes.

Content

figure
observing me through history
calling attention to fleeting beauty
questioning efforts to control the passage of time
wondering what women have gained and lost in the pursuit of beauty

And what does all this have to do with pattern and decoration you might ask?
The patterning and decoration help me establish a point in time and build a suitable environment in which to pose my visual questions.

Compose: An example of content

I know when I've been upstaged! My readers' comments have captured the audience and I'm bringing up at the rear. So I'm riding on their coat tails in this post. They all have great blogs that I visit regularly and interesting takes on many topics. Layers (Donna Watson) brought up another example of two art terms - abstract and non-objective art - that often get used interchangeably. Perhaps someone would like to take this on for a post because I'm certainly hazy on the difference.

Kelly Marszycki concluded that reading a painting depends on the viewer, their background, life experiences, etc. Beauty comma, had the same take. Kelly saw another version of the Garden of Eden and questioned who or what is locked behind the gate- the viewer or the natural world and why is this the case. Don has a similar take and puts himself behind the gate and is resentful that nature is out there ready to enjoy and he is stuck waiting on someone else to let him out (or is it in).

I think that any artwork that causes a viewer to question or consider is a success. Questions that leave one wondering are good; it often means that the work has engaged you to a point that you will think about it after your no longer have access to the image. There are really no right and wrong answers for the viewer. What a powerful position to have.



A little context will help me explain my content in the Gate painting. This is a photograph of the gate in my painting, but this one is in a closed position. It is one of the entry gates to the Millennium Garden in Birr Castle Demesne . When it is closed you can look through it and ogle the beauty that is beyond it. You can be on the outside looking in, but I was actually on the inside looking out because I had access to the garden through my "secret" door in the wall that connected the property where I stayed with the Millennium Garden. For once gates did not keep me out or in. I felt powerful.

In this particular instance, I photographed the gate when it was opened up and pressed back on top of a hydrangea bush. I was interested in the idea of containment, how compressed the leaves were and how some of them were seeking ways out. It was man against nature and nature was winning. My earliest experiences with a cultivated garden was being barred by a gate. All I could do was stand on the fence and look longingly at what was inside. Gates always bring me back to that time. The leaves are a methaphor for me in that situation.

Through her comments, hwfarber shows a good sense of plants and the uselessness of trying to contain them. They will have their way in the end. If there is any possible way for plants to spread beyond man made boundaries it will be found. That brings us nicely to Kathy who wisely asks "Can nature really be contained?"

I was pleased with Kelly's reference to the suggestion of threat she perceived in the dark background. This made me realize that I had successfully created an emotive response in the viewer.

Compose: Subject vs. Content

Often in ones attempt to clarify, more confusion is created. I hope that will not be the way this post goes. Read on.

Definitions in the visual arts field are not always consistent and various artists choose to personalize terms based on their understanding of a word. I'm no exception. I was once sternly corrected for using subject and content interchangeably when these two words have discrete meanings according to my knowledgeable friend who went to art school (I didn't, but I can research!).

Subject matter is the literal, visible image in a work while content includes the connotative, symbolic, and suggestive aspects of the image. The subject matter is the subject of the artwork, e.g., still life, portrait, landscape etc. Gerald Brommer in Emotional content: How to create paintings that communicate notes that "Content is the reason for making a painting." He further elaborates:

"Content is not subject or things in the painting. Content is the communication of ideas, feelings and reactions connected with the subject...... When we look at a painting its content is what is sensed rather than what can be analyzed. It is the ultimate reason for creating art." Something in the painting must appeal or speak to the heart, spirit and soul of the viewer. He specifically calls this "emotional content".


If you refer back to my first and second post of the Compose series, you will see that my use of the word subject also inlcludes the characteristics of content noted above. I guess that is why I am comfortable using subject to cover everything.

Here's an image I posted before from my "Reading a Garden" series. The subject matter is a still life consisting of a gate with leaves behind it. What is the content?