Light and art–learning to see

As one winter month rolls into the next and the full moon shines once again, I find myself in the studio. Currently I am working through the fifth exercise of the painting class I enrolled in back in October. The fifth and final exercise is called “Lines from Life” and it is the gift that keeps on giving! To begin, I look around and loosely gather elements from my environment. The painting process Jenny Nelson introduced involves rotating the canvas and gathering lines until I have enough information on the canvas to begin the editing process. I find this painting exercise to be a wonderful meditation on light, form, and space.

Prioritizing studio time for art

Given how complex my life feels these days, carving out studio time takes discipline and commitment. Yesterday, as I was driving back from Brunswick at around 5 PM, I saw the almost full moon shining softly in the dusky late afternoon light. Seeing the moon reminds me of the cycles of nature that supersede all human endeavors. My life is all about balance and finding ways to make my “one small life” feel meaningful and purposeful. For me, that includes cultivating my studio practice and making paintings that vibrate with light and energy.

Learning to paint is learning to see

Jenny Nelson titled her course “Exploring Abstraction” but she confessed to us that a more accurate title would be “Learning to See.” As I work through her exercises, I am amazed at how much discipline it takes for me to slow down enough to really see what is happening, moment by moment, on the canvas. I enjoy being able to see the evidence of earlier mark-making–the thinking process still visible in the finished piece. Interestingly, I like to stop painting while the elements still feel emergent and not quite still or “locked in”. This means keeping edges soft and open and noticing the interactions of the elements–color, line, shape, and value, or dark and light.

Layers create light

What shines through or hovers on the surface? Do you see anything visible underneath a mark or shape? Transparency and opacity are additional ways I can modify the paint and play with light. Layering begins by covering the painting surface with a ground, or first layer of color. Often, I used a thin transparent wash. In “Lines from Life 1”, I had a canvas on hand that I had painted with an earth red called Red Oxide, a very dense earth pigment, so the ground was heavy and opaque, I used Jenny’s limited palette of colors–burnt sienna for red, yellow ochre for yellow, and Payne’s gray for blue, with titanium white. Additionally, I introduced alizarin crimson, a cool purply red, to create a little more vibrational energy. In the finished painting I enjoy seeing how the small purply red areas contrast with the very punchy red oxide under layer. Notably, I painted the lightest areas using a soft cool blue, a pale tint of Payne’s gray mixed with white.

Creating unusual compositions

In each of my paintings I have organized the space differently, creating compositions that feel surprising and novel. The challenge I am giving myself is to invent, to really see the work-in-process, and not to rely on old habits. Exploring Abstraction has been a refresher for me in “learning to see”. Through this process I have found it quite exciting to open myself up to possibility and the unknown.

The moon is in the sky and the earth is below, but paintings are different

We know that the sky is up above us and that’s where the Moon lives. We also know, from our crawling days onward, that the earth or ground is below us. In between sky and earth is life–human, animal, and plant life. Incidentally, I reference this frequently in my tai chi classes. As my students know, we begin each of our tai chi practice sessions by orienting ourselves between heaven and earth. Curiously, with a painting it’s quite different. How so? As we all know, either consciously or unconsciously, a painting is made on a flat surface. So any indication of space that an artist creates is an illusion.

Light and art, final thoughts

Knowing that artists have the ability to create the illusion of light and space in their work, how do we orient ourselves to look at a painting? Do we start looking in the center and move our eyes around clockwise or, perhaps counterclockwise? Or perhaps we can begin by looking at the bottom of the canvas and work our way up to the top, or visa-versa? Understanding that there is no “one right way” can free us up to be more curious. Becoming more aware of how we see and perceive art may help us in other realms. Notably, this article from the Portland Museum of Art‘s website and this one from the Portland Press Herald both speak about about how medical students are using art to hone their skills of observation and to cultivate empathy. Importantly, taking the judgement out of the equation may help us all become more objective when we see art that does not conform to the way we perceive the world.

Love, Robin

PS “Light” at River Arts in Damariscotta

Local friends, please check out Light, the current exhibit at River Arts Gallery in Damariscotta. My collage “In the Garden” is featured in this juried exhibition. My garden collage is part of the New Work gallery on my website. Here is a photo of the plants that inspired my garden collage. The purple morning glory vines and the desert-hardy Hopi Red Dye Amaranth plants show up each spring in our sandy garden soil. Enjoy!