Q: Would you talk about your use of Mexican and Guatemalan folk art as a convenient way to study formal properties such as color, shape, pattern, composition, etc. in your pastel paintings?
Models, reference photograph, and pastel painting in progress
A: For me an interesting visual property of these objects is that they readily present themselves as a vehicle for exploring formal artistic properties, like color, pattern, shape, etc. especially compared to my earlier subject matter: hyper-realistic portraits and still-lifes. Intent as I was on creating verisimilitude in the earlier work, there was little room for experimentation.
Many Mexican and Guatemalan folk art objects are wildly painted and being a lover of color, their brilliant colors and patterns are what initially attracted me. As a painter I am free to use their actual appearance as my starting point. I photograph them out-of-focus and through colored gels in order to change their appearance and make them strange, enacting my own particular version of “rendering the familiar strange.” Admittedly these objects are not so familiar to begin with.
When I make a pastel painting I look at my reference photograph and I also look at the objects, positioning them within eye-shot of my easel. There is no need whatsoever to be faithful to their actual appearance so my imagination takes over. As I experiment with thousands of soft pastels, with shape, with pattern, with composition, and all the rest, I have one goal in mind – to create the best pastel-on-sandpaper painting I am capable of making.
Comments are welcome!
Posted on June 6, 2015, in 2015, An Artist's Life, Art Works in Progress, Black Paintings, Creative Process, Guatemala, Inspiration, Mexico, Pastel Painting, Photography, Studio, Working methods and tagged actual, appearance, artistic, attracted, brilliant, change, color, compared, convenient, creating, earlier, easel, enacting, especially, experiment, experimentation, exploring, eye-shot, faithful, familiar, folk art, formal, gels, goal, Guatemalan, hyper-realistic, imagination, initially, intent, interesting, lover, making, matter, Mexican, mind, models, objects, out-of-focus, painted, painting, particular, pastel, pattern, photograph, point, portraits, positioning, present, progress, property, readily, reference, rendering, shape, starting, still-lifes, strange, subject, themselves, vehicle, verisimilitude, version, visual, whatsoever, wildly, work. Bookmark the permalink. Comments Off on Q: Would you talk about your use of Mexican and Guatemalan folk art as a convenient way to study formal properties such as color, shape, pattern, composition, etc. in your pastel paintings?.
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