Which colour & texture combinations then inspired the ‘playful’ creation of a digital ‘painting’, intended to walk something of a line between abstraction & representation, with the saturated flat colour field of the sky blue occupying the greater area of the picture plane before abutting against the contrasting division provided by the more visually ‘incidental’ irregularly-gridded, lightly textured, rusty orange ‘stripe’ to the right, a little computer-generated homage to Modernism. One might also acknowledge the influence of Jazz Green in seeing the ‘painterly’ potential inherent in, particularly, incidents of colour & texture as encountered out in both the natural & built environment, & as occur in the brickwork in this particular scene.
(digital 'painting')
The process of the realization of the ‘painting’ as imagined from source involved more work than initially assumed, with the ‘corrective’ distortion of the chimney stack - so that it would read frontally & as flat as possible, with the ‘grid’ properly right-angled, in the interests of asserting its best Greenbergian modernist credentials – having to be done so incrementally, in 2 – 3 row blocks, rather than en bloc, given the angle of perspective of the original image: an instructive if time-consuming learning curve, which oft seems to be the rule when employing digital technology.
The subliminal inspiration behind the desire to photographically record the scene (before the motivation to ‘paint’ from/with it) might well have been the brilliant Indian skies as featured in the film ‘The Darjeeling Limited’, transmitted on television yesterday evening (but watched a little later).
Such a celestial blue was but one of the vivid colours gracing, saturating, the picture, with particular emphasis also on saffron, earthy reds & turquoise, all of which nicely complemented the oft (it seemed) grey-suited protagonists. As with the earlier ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’ (suitably enthused about here for much the same reason), although in a considerably higher key than the muted autumnal tones of pinks, browns & greys of such, ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ proved to be another aesthetically ravishing production by Wes Anderson, to immerse oneself in visually & thus be borne along by the unfolding narrative flow: gorgeous stuff, & there always seem to moments of great poignancy too. Most enjoyable. And of course it should be remembered that this blog was originally entitled ‘The Life Aesthetic...’ in acknowledgement of ‘The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou’ (which itself features some delightful colour coding & co-ordinating) & Mr Anderson’s work in general.
But, in a not unusual development, we digress...
Further to structures protruding upwards, ‘disruptively’, into the expansive, immersive colour field of the clear blue sky, or seen, perhaps, as still life objects placed upon a slim horizontal plane against such a ‘ground’, another couple of images captured during this morning’s photo-shoot: firstly, the oppositely-neighbouring television aerial & the crest of a chimney cowl as they emerge above the ridge of the roof...
Then a more diagonally dynamic approach taken to the pictorial rendering of the first chimney stack with attached TV aerial against the sky...
No claims for anything artistically special here, but perhaps there’s a nod towards the influence of William Eggleston in the featuring of apparently banal subject matter & the saturated colour.
4 comments:
thank you for the mention, although I think you are too kind - i am really just a point 'n' shooter...
on a side note, i continue to notice the absence of or perhaps deliberate replacement of the word 'and' with the more decorative ampersand symbol... which, in itself, is an sign of mark-making, a drawing...
& drat, i see an error in my typing, i meant a sign of, of course...
Any mention is warranted, Jazz, & is intended to bear some relevance to proceedings - I believe your website, the thoughts, writing & work (product & process) presented there, to be an exemplary resource of an artist at work, well worth bringing to anyone's attention if possible.
Your photos always seem so keenly 'seen', visually intriguing & aesthetically pleasing, & it's instructive to see how these might them feed into your painting & drawing practice. In the absence of that library book on the subject of visual textures (on loan), I've pointed a few of our students in your direction as a fine alternative (& with grateful responses, I must add, once they've seen what you have to offer).
The use of the ampersand - which has endured since the very beginning of the blog - is nothing more than a labour-saving shortcut, but I do admire its aesthetic, it must be admitted, & much prefer this to the functionality & ubiquity of 'and'.
The mark-making 'signage', & consideration of drawing (especially when one thinks of the graphic elegance & beauty of some of the available fonts in which the sign can be presented) is certainly a pleasing one in such a context.
On a related matter, I always admire your lower-case & thus perceived-as egoless 'i'!
interesting that you should perceive lowercase as ego-less - i see it as a counterpoint to the ego required for 'blogging'... but it is also a time-saving device while typing!
the ego is something i do consider more broadly in my work - the absence of a persona or human narrative... thus, titling work becomes difficult...
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