Abstract Painting: Simplify
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Abstract Painting: Simplify
Sometimes it’s nice to just simplify everything down to the essentials: shape, value and color - or lack of color in this painting demonstration. I think it’s harder to distill the painting process down to simply shapes, values and colors than it is too use lots of each and make a piece more complicated. Simplification is difficult, but sometimes necessary.
Lots of times I feel I am doing the same thing because I paint certain color combinations in my workshops to illustrate to my students how to use color. Occasionally, I like to do something different that still fits in with what I do as an abstract painter. In this painting demo I have simplified everything down to it’s essence. Simple shapes, two values and two colors (three colors, if you count the white of the paper).
Let me give you a little background on this composition. As many of you know, prior to becoming a full time artist, I was an architect for 30 years. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my late friend and architectural mentor, Jim Fox. The painting in this demo is titled with his initials, JHF, for James Howard Fox. Jim died the day before my birthday in 2017. I’ve been going through my old pictures of him and his many projects that I was fortunate enough to visit over the years, as well as his many amazing drawings. Jim was as much an artist as any architect I have ever known. He was also a structural genius and his ability to imagine a structure, come up with an amazing real life solution and then get it built is still mind numbing for me.
Without going into too much detail, Jim always used a “frame” system for his structures. The series of shapes in this painting are a takeoff, so to speak, on a typical Jim Fox framing system. I’ve been thinking lately about incorporating some of Jim’s geometries in paintings, so this painting came to be. I used a small, crude gestural sketch to get me going, which is shown below. You can also see it in the video to the right of my painting surface.
I think I will probably pursue more of these geometric paintings in the near future, even though I have tried not to produce any overtly geometric pieces over the last 30 years. Maybe I need to get back to basics. Back to a place where I can simply SIMPLIFY.
If you'd like to learn about abstract painting, then please join me for a painting workshop: (You can view a list of 2020 workshops HERE)
March 9-11 Hickory Museum of Art, Hickory, NC. Contact Ginny Zellmer, Email: gzellmer@hickoryart.org. For information and registration Click Here.
March 26-28 Franciscan Life Process Center, Lowell, MI. Contact Kathy Bechtel, Email: kbechtel@lifeprocesscenter.org. For information and registration Click Here.
April 3-4 Greenville, SC, Greenville Center for Creative Arts. Contact: Liz Rundorff Smith, Email: liz@artcentergreenville.org. For information and registration Click Here.
April 22-24 David M. Kessler Fine Art Studio, Winston-Salem, NC. For information and registration, Click Here.
May 1-3 Tubac School of Fine Art, Tubac, AZ. For information and registration Click Here.
May 20-22 Hill Country Arts Foundation, Ingram, TX. For information and registration Click Here.
June 12-14 Fort Smith Regional Art Museum, Fort Smith, AR. For information and registration Click Here.
As always, thanks for your support!
David
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