These are small paintings ~ 10" X 10" and 12" X 12". All on 2" deep wood panels with the images wrapping around the sides. All primarily acrylic, charcoal and paper collage, with some ink.
Each one is painted over an older painting that failed to find a home.
I approached this group a little differently than my usual method, which is often basically just winging it and putting total faith in my intuition. This time I set some guidelines, or goals,
in the form of four elements to be included:
1) Pattern (This is easy, adding any repeated element within any given area. Serves the purpose of visual interest.)
2) Contrast (An element I have a tendency to disregard. I don't use light or a light source in my paintings, so any contrast needs to be shown through putting dark things or areas against light things or areas.)
3) Focal point (Another element I tend to forget about until I realize I have a painting that is, as my friend Neal put it, "all paragraph without a topic sentence".)
4) Visual flow (Making sure each segment of the design relates to the others, helping the eye to move around the image.)
5) A fifth element could be added, Detail, but I usually use that anyway. Always the last thing.
See what you think...
As a result of all this experimenting with all this stuff I wanted to make sure got included, these paintings took a really long time (!), eighty percent of which was spent staring at them and twenty percent actually applying paint or collage. I wanted to make sure everything was doing what it was intended to do before I started adding details. The details are often what pulls everything together. It was hard to trust that they were working well enough to go ahead with that final stage.
All said and done, I am satisfied with them.
I see a richness that could be from this more deliberate approach and process.
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