Contemporary Abstract Art and Paintings
Many of my paintings are based off of digital sketches. Every once in a while I need to free up and create some spontaneous images. I like using my shape motifs and current ideas and using them in a more immediate approach….This has a sense of yearning and movement.
I finally finished this piece up from conceiving it 2 years ago. I was limiting my imagery to straight geometric shapes at the time. I am happy with the way it came out. I cut the MDO to the shape, and it stands off the wall a few inches….really creates a feeling of depth and dimension.
Lately I have become intrigued by altering pure geometric shapes slightly to infer organic shapes in nature. This painting started as horizontal bands of color. I then started to randomly place cutout pieces of vinyl stencils that I used in other paintings. Through the early summer, the composition created itself, and to me, suggests sea life in a dark nightclub.
I came across this while cleaning the studio. I made it by printing process colors on clear cast laminate. There are three layers applied on top of each other. This creates the secondary and tertiary colors, and in the areas where the same color is over layered, creates a very luminous final original color (cyan, magenta, and yellow). The base is made from 2 white acrylic pieces cut to trapezoidal shapes and fitted together. This photo can’t capture the real candy like luminescence of the colors in this piece!
I have decided to do a series based on the formula that I randomly discovered last week. It imposes a set of limitations that ironically presents the possibility of countless variations. I like the green created by the transparent yellow over the cobalt blue. I am fascinated by hexagons, such a spiritual and poweful shape.
When I work on paintings I often have some color left that I don’t want to waste, so I have some paper, sihl, pvc and canvas that I will apply the leftover paint to. It frees me up to be very experimental cos these bits of material were destined for the dumpster anyway. I usually will end up using parts of these in collages, but sometimes I get a complete statement that stands alone. The last swipe of the reddish/orange paint kicked the above into a whole different world of unexpected beauty. I like how the geometric shapes become organic, even floral while the different uneven textures imply some kind of cosmic light. The bonus is that none of it was planned, and now I have stumbled upon a basis for a new series.
OK, OK so I didn’t finish all the paintings that have been lingering, but I am really close, so I gave myself the go-ahead to start the new ones!
The “lingering” paintings have been experiments in spontaneous decisions about colors, shapes, textures, relationships, etc. I treat them like a game where I impose a problem that I have to solve. The decisions create other challenges and eventually I resolve them in a finished piece. They tend to mutate, and take some time to come to completion, which is part of the process. But I am antsy to get my new ideas on canvas. These are compositions that I have worked out on the computer and now need to take tangible form. So, I am taking the insights I have gained from those experiments and applying them to the new paintings. Basically areas of random process in contained, deliberate space. It adds some organic mystery to the hard edge shapes and creates a secondary motion to the composition.
I am in the process of finishing paintings that have been lingering in the studio for a while. I want to finish their chapters before starting new work. I am excited about the idea for this new series; taking simple geometric shapes and distorting, cropping and then layering. The concept is based on the way we go through a day, the different activities we perform while shifting our core selves to fit the moments. I hope to be starting the first couple of paintings in the next week or so.