Leave It In Neutral

Today, cropping a still life painting and "leaving it in neutral" was the challenge proposed in the studio. I found joy in setting up a simple still life, and I found it to be hard work to stay in neutral (primary color mixed with secondary) throughout an entire painting. I love the colors formed out of the mixtures — the heaps of different colors and pigments, tones and temperatures you can get out of three simple colors (red, blue, yellow with the help of white and black) just amazes me. There were moments I wanted to stay true to the sight in front of me, but it was adventurous and exciting to step out of my comfort zone and be pulled into a new way of seeing. 

Know, See, Feel

Still Life painting is rather interesting. Complimentary to Still Life Drawing... only colorfully strategic in the placement of brush strokes. In the four hours I was fully immersed into this artwork, I learned something about the order of things. Knowing; Insight into something is known as Knowledge, Educating, or Understanding, which then leads to having the ability to See. When you know what something is doing—how objects are interacting—you then have a heightened sense of Sight. When you see more clearly, you begin to Feel the Impact of it on a real level and can therefore Express it. I couldn't properly display the way these fruit interacted with each other and the cloth they sat on without fixing my attention on them and learning what it was they were doing with my eyes. Leaning into a vision wholeheartedly and thoughtfully helped me experience the shifting of colors the light gave off the fruit and onto the cloth while also allowing me to interact with the way they moved throughout my canvas.

Feeling It Out

Painting has always been a desire of mine. The thought of having paint all over my hands and getting brushes and surfaces messy has always brought delight to me. Drawing has been my dominant practice as an artist, so when I paint, "feeling it out" is quite a beautiful process. I've been told painting and drawing are completely different, but I reckon you need to know one in order to know the other. When I say know, I mean understand. Art, for me, is an exploration into a subject. I want my understanding... my findings... to speak for the artwork, through the artwork. Today, I grew in my understanding of colorfully portraying a white still life.

Spontaneous Strategy

The most recent color theory exploration led to a portrait painting by Matisse of his wife with a green stripe down the middle of her face. Before diving into creating my own version of his painting, I got to admire the strokes he took to create her and even more-so the beautiful, thought out color theory he presented. When I got to dive in to the actual painting process, I found I was even more mesmorized than before when I was actually mixing the colors myself and applying them. "Spontaneous strategy"is how I would define this painting's theory of color.