marysgardens

Part of the palette

This is the to be continued story of my painting exercise on an old canvas where I shift from idea to idea and technique to technique while “holding that structural thought.” Currently, I am playing with a painting of ocean and atmosphere and considering their shared emergence into the sense of horizons.

I find the choices in painting horizons to be infinite. Much like a snowflake, each depiction of a a horizon is unique, yet somehow we continue to recognize the horizon for what it is.

We may continue to sense the horizon even when we cannot really see it.

Horizons do not need to be depicted as straight lines across the canvas. Some artists have horizons that are shown via diagonal slopes. Here is an example painted by my sister, Elizabeth Rose. I like the sense of view that she is approaching the mountain from the sky rather than viewing it from the ground.

Elizabeth Rose, acrylics

My sister Elizabeth and I both paint and we enjoy sharing our paintings and styles with each other. She paints in her living room. I have an art studio in my basement. We both reach for new understandings through painting. We both have grandchildren who enjoy painting and sketching with us. It is a wonderful way of relating.

In Elizabeth’s case, she is painting a kind of revelation that reaches awesome thoughts of clouds and light trajectories across majestic mountains that seem to reach beyond our planet and out to the universe.

I show her painting in black and white to emphasize the point of motion and shifting light.

In my experimental painting, I am imagining an early morning sunrise out in the ocean on an island, where color, reflection and time are all blurred or merged into a single multi sensory, abrupt experience

I started with this roughed up canvas using white and black for the emphasis of light and dark areas (Canvas A).

Then I prepared a kind of Notan design that suggests motion as well as balance of light and dark (Canvas B).

Then I shifted to the underlying pastels of sunrise ( Canvas C).

Canvas C

This was followed by the over-slap of bright colors put on by palette knife and softened by brushes to be reflective of the split-second deeply bright shooting sunrise itself (Canvas D)

And as it looks today, I have worked on grasping the abrupt brilliance of those few split seconds where sunlight takes over the morning skies and water reflections

Canvas D. Early Sunrise, Oils

In conclusion, much like life itself, all present paintings have pasts and futures to contemplate. Horizons are moving targets just like everything else and our sense of timing and judgement of their emphasis is an artist’s prerogative.

I now take a moment to hold that thought.

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