The Aesthetics of Composition in Abstract Painting: texture

Showing posts with label texture. Show all posts

Sunday, December 2, 2007

Texture painting Final

Here is the finished Oil painting.

Texture Campaign #16 "Valued Customer a" 60x48

2007

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Anything can be used as a tool for oil painting. As a child I knew a man that painted with sharpened sticks and twigs and referred to himself as the twig painter. Each painting tool is a discipline to master. While working solely with the pallet knife I needed a larger surface to move paint, I chose to use a toaster for several composition paintings simply because was the tool that could get the results I was looking for. The concept that I was working on at the time dictated what tool I use, as I chose the toaster simply because I could only acquire the results I wanted from its large, flat, smooth surface. I wanted a larger size so I used a freezer door as my tool, with the same intended purpose as the toaster and pallet knife. My personal experiments with unconventional tools did not end there and eventually lead me back to the brush. These experiences gave me separate voices of dramatic difference within my work that I someday may eventually unite into a single personality with a voice based on multiple techniques.

I once challenged an artist to paint with a wind up toy bear that’s arms would become animated in opposing directions, swinging in a swimming motion, and a small toilet plunger. Although the physical aesthetic of the work he produced was poor, if the artist would have continued to practice the discipline in oil painting with the toy bear and toilet plunger he would have eventually found a way to create what his intuitive mind was telling him in an aesthetically pleasing manner. The toy bear and a toilet plunger were experiments in teaching an understanding of what a tool is to the artist. The lesson was intended to remove the artists dependance on a conventional painting tool as the brush, and to teach the artist that all painting tools are simply a discipline within themselves to learn. My apprentice painted five works with the toy bear and toilet plunger. It was not until the fourth work did he begin to get a handle on the tools themselves, and not until the 5^th did he start to see the lesson of tool as a discipline.

Prior to this experiment I attempted the same lesson with this artist, confining him to use one brush type per painting. The lesson, tool as discipline, is the same here as it was with the unconventional tools, but my apprentice couldn’t separate his mind from the brush as he used it even though he was only allowed to paint exclusively per brush type. His unimaginative approach to painting and painting tools that pointed me in the direction of removing his habits with the unconventional and witty toy wind up bear and toilet plunger. I had to remove the idea of tools as tools, making the action of painting absurd in order for him to see the ideas behind the lesson. Subsequently this artist should have been able to see this on his own, and as far as I know he no longer paints.
together we did have a very good time painting, and Stefan was extremely talented in illustration, and I hope that he still works creatively today as he did yesterday.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Studio #3 - 3219 Lyndale Basement studio

My 3rd art studio in Minneapolis was in the basement of an apartment building. I had a 20' x 20' space with 30' ceiling and a tiny window at the top. As with all of my studios I spent weeks prepping, cleaning (throwing out dead beat renters stuff out), building, and arranging the place until I was ready to paint.

I created my chrome works in this studio, and really not much else. I worked on my large texture chrome paintings for almost a year before I was happy with them. Living here was not uneventful, as i created one of my masterworks (or so i think it is). enjoy the pics.

At the time I was so proud of this painting that upon completing it I sat and stared at it for over a month. that might sound excessive, but it was so different, so new, that I had to be sure it was as good as I believed it to be. When you create something that you truly believe a masterwork, its hard to accept at first. You stare at it and evaluate its worth, your worth, and how it is going to be received.

Boots in the studio.

Greg

Catherine A. Palmer

Thanks for spending some time here...

...keep checking back I will post more soon.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Improvisation studies

I was going through my portfolio and I found these old oil pastel studies from 1998/99.

They were fun. I have chosen a direction with my current work that is completely abstract from concept to composition. These remind me of how fun a bit of allegory can be.

Enjoy them...

...I may work this direction again someday.

Wednesday, January 4, 2006

"Shark Compositions" series of paintings

This series was a painted during a time in my life (1998 - 1999) when compositional abstraction and my ideas of being the mental state of your work as you work on it was completely new to me. I had been a portrait artist that converted to still life, and abstraction just felt right. or so I think, memory fails us as we go back and look a our lives, as I am sure it is for me.

Artist statement

This series was intended to present the various mental states of an individual soldier during and after war. The mythology of the Hawaiian Islands to represent the identity of a shark as a metaphor to symbolize said mental state of a soldier. The mythology of the pacific islands believe that when an individual is acting out of place he is wearing the spirit and identity of a shark.

As a source of inspiration I looked toward the behavioral traits of schizophrenia; conflicts of confusion both rational and irrational, violence, an adolescent-like lust, and lack of self-control, as the foundation for my methods used in the application of paint.

War being what it is induces an almost schizophrenic-like psychology to the fundamental beliefs of right and wrong. Wrong is only in question when it is committed on the individuals perception of interpretation.

Adam M. Considine 1999