Compose: Pulling it all together

There's so much to attend to as you paint ! The wise artist is planning from the beginning and referencing that plan as the project develops. I am not always wise and often work myself into corners that require quite a bit of digging to get out of. My strength usually lies in subject selection and making the painting say what I want. Even that is a problem with Daylilies; I seem to have fallen down with every aspect. This is my last Compose post for awhile and I will try to pull the painting together.

There is good, overall movement in the classic s shape of the composition. The large open flower as the centre of interest in believable, but it could be advanced more in the picture plane (probably by making the flower below/behind it recede.

I think most of the problems lie in the upper right section. I need to sink the flower in this section back beyond the open lily. The stem is much too pronounced and needs to recede too. I've drawn even more attention to this problem by having the leaves form an x. What was I thinking? Obviously I wasn't! I need to tidy up this whole corner. The other area that is unfinished is the lower left where the red blob is located. It's not formed.

Now for the grayscale which effectively pinpoints any difficulties with values. My usual problem is evident - not enough darks, too many midtones. I am just not a dramatic painter. I plan to darken the lower left corner more. The leaf tip in the upper left is also too bright. Creating a 4 value scale of this painting in the beginning would have saved me a lot of problems!

Onward to the most difficult aspect - my conflict about what I am trying to say. As I pointed out in the second post in this series, this is an issue and probably accounts for why I'm struggling with the painting.

From my second post:
What part of the subject should be emphasized to maximize the emotion /impression?
The colour, elegance, structure and their freedom are easy to emphasize. I am not capturing the transience that is so important to my perception of them. Perhaps I need to refocus and paint one or two obviously withered ones, but I also need to somehow portray the melancholy I feel about these flowers. That is very subtle and right now I'm at a loss about how to show it. I'll keep going with the questions/suggestions ...

My answer to me:
You can't say everything in one painting. Focus on the colour, elegance, structure and freedom of the flowers. Transience is well represented in other works in the series.

I hope to have 18 paintings in this exhibition and each one represents at least one aspect of my reading of this particular garden. It's time I created a carefree, happy atmosphere. I am too attracted to melancholy !

Now off to the studio to start making corrections. I may find more are necessary once I dig in. I'll post the final painting with the corrections later.

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?

Compose: Selecting a Subject 2

This is a painting I am having difficulty finishing and I am going to use it as an example as I go through the various posts I plan to do on composition. Hopefully at the end of the series I'll resolve the painting by using the information for reflection . There's nothing like a problem to get you thinking.

About the series:
As this piece is part of my Reading a Garden Series, it has to focus on something that stood out to me in my two week stay at Birr Castle Demesne. It must references my understanding /response to some experience. My process in selecting topics to paint starts with culling my photographs taken during my two week stay . Once I knew I wanted to create a work based on the daylilies , I proceeded to choose four photographs to use in image transfers, which I create in gel skins and apply to the board. These would be my starting point, evidence of my "real experiences". ( If you look closely you can see the edges of these transfers. I want them visible.) From these I begin to change the images by adding to them and creating whole new sections using paint and paper or eroding the details they provide until I have captured what I remember (mostly sense memories) from the experience. As more time intervenes I'm forgetting much and embellishing more and more of the details.

In my last post I listed a series of things to consider in selecting a subject to paint. I will try to answer them with reference to this painting. My point is if I had considered them in more depth before I began the work rather than just barging in , I might not be in this trouble. I plan to post the questions next to my paint table for future reminders.

Why are you attracted to the subject? Why does it appeal to you?

This is my fourteenth piece in this series and one of four works focusing on flowers chosen for different reasons.

These Daylilies grew in abundance along a path I walked each day in The Millennium Garden in Birr Castle Demesne. There were orange ones and yellow ones which I photographed on several different days. The vibrancy of the orange/rust ones captured my attention and the yellow ones were left in the background.

Daylilies (hemerocallis) are very interesting structurally. I am attracted to tall graceful plants with more complicated flower structures. The daylily also has long, narrow, blade like leaves that move in the wind and seem to grow in all directions. The most fascinating thing about the flowers on these plants is that they open at sunrise and wither at sunset. Each day new ones are in bloom so you are never seeing the same one twice. It is this point that most interests me because it represents the essence of the temporary nature of beauty and how fleeting our lives are. You have to hand it to daylilies they give it their all for one day.

What emotion grabs you when you look at it? How can you express this emotion?

I'm attracted to their vibrant colour, elegance and freedom to move so readily in the wind. One one hand I like the fact that I'm seeing new blooms every day and the scene is continuously changing, but underneath there is melancholy because they are so short lived and in this way not free at all. I'm conflicted, this is probably why I am having so much trouble finishing this work.

What part of the subject should be emphasized to maximize the emotion /impression?
The colour, elegance, structure and their freedom are easy to emphasize. I am not capturing the transience that is so important to my perception of them. Perhaps I need to refocus and paint one or two obviously withered ones, but I also need to somehow portray the melancholy I feel about these flowers. That is very subtle and right now I'm at a loss about how to show it. I'll keep going with the questions/suggestions ...

What colours/key suits the mood you want to impart?

This might be my area where I have to solve the melancholy issue by toning down the vibrancy. I have really played up the leaves which support the flowers - maybe they are a bit too energetic and playful. The flowers are more low key and seem to be working better with the emotions I am interested in imparting.


What will identify this painting as yours (showing yourself in the painting)?
The process I am using beginning with phototransfers and manipulating them based on the erosion of memory with the passage of time has become a constant in my work of late. The close up, controlled view adds to the me-ness of the work. The subject matter is consistent with my interests and past work.

That's my effort at reflection. I don't want to invest hours into the process because when I reread it tomorrow i'll have a whole new set of ideas. I'm sure the able comments of my readers will move me along with this. Comments anyone?

Compose: Selecting a Subject

The first step in the creation of an outstanding artwork is the selection of the subject matter. In the early phases of ones practice subject matter may be partially influenced by teachers in school or workshops, through reading popular art magazines or viewing art produced by others. This is a time of finding your way, of having faith in the knowledge of others, of deciding what you want to do and how you want to do it. The search for subject is often overshadowed by process, by the time spent learning to use different media and to render well.

Then comes the time when you are in your own studio with a blank canvas , and you realize that it's not about the techniques you worked so hard to learn, but that the work you create should be about something. Art is a form of communication and all the decisions from topic onward are yours to make. In my own situation, I had taken dozens of classes and workshops, read numerous art books, seen thousands of art works in my travels, been to local art galleries and had friends who were successful artists. I wanted to be an artist who created thoughtful work. About what? Panic!

It's a scary time, a time when you realize that if you are going to be successful, you have to bring something unique to the work you do. If you don't have something that is unique to add, why bother? Around the time of this epiphany I was reading a book called Design and Composition Secrets of Professional Artists.

This was an important book in my career that taught me that there are many roads to follow, and that they all begin with a personal view of the world. It was also at that time that I accepted that my past experiences in another profession were an advantage rather than something that was setting me back. I'm sure Donna Baspaly has no idea that several points on one of her composition checklists changed how I began to think about subject matter. Donna relies heavily on a series of checklists to keep her in tune with her work through the whole process of creation.


While I've made some minor additions these are Donna's questions about subject:

• why are you attracted to the subject? why does it appeal to you?
• what emotion grabs you when you look at it? how can you express this emotion?
• what part of the subject should be emphasized to maximize that emotion/impression?
• what colours/key suits the mood you want to impart?
• what will identify this painting as yours (showing yourself in the painting) ?

Every design decision you make should bring you back to your primary reason for creating the work.

Tom Huntley in this same book agrees that all starts with subject and advises "do not record what you see, interpret what you feel."

The Midas Touch

The Midas Touch, 8 x 10 in. encaustic mixed media

It's never just a flower for me. There is always some underlying reason why I choose to highlight one flower over another in my work. Tulips have an interesting history that we can learn from.

Tulips are native to the western Mediterranean and the steppes of Central Asia. The empire of the Ottoman Turks once included much of the land that was the natural habitat of the tulip. It was through Turkey that most of the tulips reached Western Europe.

The shape of the tulip reminded those first Europeans who acquired them of Turkish headwear, and they dubbed the flower "tulipan", from "tuilbend", a Turkish word for "turban". The Italian word tulipano came from the Turkish word tulibend. From "tulipan" came the French word "tulipe" and the English word tulip.

The Turks cultivated the tulip widely and in 1562 the first large shipment of tulips reached Antwerp, then part of the Dutch nation. It is hard to believe that there was a time in the 1630's when the desire for highly prized tulips created through horticultural experimentation led to "tulipomania" . At that time tulips were available only to the rich who coveted them for their beauty, rarity and status. Once middle class merchants and farmers began to realize how much money was involved in the tulip trade they sensed economic opportunity. Everyone wanted in. The bottom fell out of the market during 1637 when bulb merchants couldn't get the usual inflated prices for their bulbs. Word spread like wildfire and the market crashed. Vanity and greed led to the economic downfall of many men at that time. Sound familiar?

This work reflects the tulip as a prized object, cultivated and desired through history. Today interest in new varieties of tulips remains high. The yellow parrot tulips represented on the right side of the work are very popular. The left side of the work alludes to some of the history of the tulip.