I prefer to paint with Acrylic paints. I don’t have the temperament to wait for oils to dry. I am drawn to what can develop from a flat, white piece of canvas using colored plastic pushed from synthetic brush strokes.
I start the process by finding a subject to paint. I will scour the Internet or flip through photographs I have taken to find a subject matter or interest. What draws my attention is arrangement and color. Chances are if I am passing by a scene with these factors, I will stop and investigate it more, most likely taking a photograph and putting it in my “to paint” file. Even if I am painting from a black and white photograph, I will paint it in full color. Choosing colors based on the mood I want to give the picture. I believe that painting is an illusion of the actual thus when I paint I am giving you my interpretation of it. I also believe it is a captured moment where we can interpret and present an expression of this object. A sky presented as a flat monotone gives a different expression than one with contrasting dark, thick strokes.
I enjoy the challenges of painting different subject matters and the varying results I get in my interpretations of them. I am currently working to find a style that I feel the most comfortable with. I fluctuate back and forth from precise clear representations of an object or scene to an conceptual style that allows for more of an abstract interpretation of the subject using thick and bold strokes to covey its meaning. My choice is leaning toward the abstract style.
Interesting, Amy.
ReplyDeleteI am fascinated by how you characterize your process lately as being one that is on this kind of teeter-totter, dipping into abstraction and 'realism.' That said, (and I am referring here to the last sentence of your post), I wonder if you haven't already made a choice. I am not suggesting that you aren't genuinely working through your relationship to realism and abstraction, and I am certainly not suggesting that it would be a bad thing to ultimately lean either way; I am just thinking that, you know, you seem to be invested in both modes of representation to some degree. Does that mean that you will end up painting in such a way that you incorporate abstracting techniques of representation as well as realistic ones into single works? I am also not trying to suggest that. I just think that there is something to be said about embracing this kind of inner tension, where you are wrestling with seemingly conflicting artistic urges. I wouldn't be surprised, as I come to be more familiar with your work, to see that tension present.
I would also add that its intriguing that you find your 'objects' on the internet. In thinking about abstraction, representation, realism, and what you call... "illusion of the actual," the fact that you go to internet images as your staring point makes me suspect that your artistic itinerary is such that your works might themselves be products and testaments to your own inner-dialogue concerning realism and representation.
Intriguing stuff, Amy.