Art & Perception

Sandy edge, 18 inch x 18 inch, oil on birchwood panel

Vertical seems to be an ephemeral property. A sandy edge molded by ice and waves will soon crumble. The jaggedness of the Great Teton Mountains will be replaced by rounded shapes demonstrated by the juxtaposed older Gros Ventre Mountains.

In much of the cosmos, there is a wealth of curved lines – the planets with their elliptical motion, our double Helix and the curvatures of our spine.

Why then is verticality inspirational with gothic and current architecture reaching into the sky?

Birgit Zipser, watery fantasy, 11×14 inches, oil on panel

‘What I learned when I learned to draw’ by Adam Gopnick, The New Yorker, June 27th, discusses Jacob Collins‘ approach to drawing, which involves perceptual rather than conceptual viewing. The idea is to disengage from drawing symbols – conceptual schema of an arm or a face – and draw what you actually see. What you actually see may be a funny shape, a frog or an outline of a new African state, due to the play of light and shade on the body of the model. Thus, Gopnick was guided to learn to draw by ‘searching for strange shapes to break his symbol set’.

Jacob Collins in his “traditional realist revivalism” paints nudes, still lifes and landscapes. I may understand how the artist can draw a person modeling for him or cherries in a bowl by searching for shades and shapes rather than by using conceptual symbols. But doesn’t this approach break down when landscapes are drawn that contain water?

Water does not hold still for the slow musing approach to drawing that Adam Gopnick tells us Jacob Collins uses. My question is does Collins paint water using his symbol set of water?

Blauer Fetzen, Birgit Zipser, oil on birch panel, 24 inches x 18 inches

The speakers of the last two talks at the Glen Arbor Art Association – Michael Letts on June 9, 2011 and Rachel Meginnes on June 23, 2011 – had things in common.

Both Michael Letts and Rachel Meginnes focus on geometrical patterns – Michael paints landscapes in abstract symbols and Rachel paints geometric shapes on cloth.

Both artists professed a zen-like attitude towards, what one may consider, tedious tasks. Michael paints ‘marks’ on his large geometrical sketches achieving a fabulous 3-D effect with shadows and highlights. Rachel, to generate the orthogonal grid underlying her painting, pulls threads out of fabric, usually cotton.

It was inspiring to listen to both discussing further development of their art – Michael Letts is experimenting with new motifs and Rachel Meginnes is developing a novel technology in fiber art.

Geometry and meditation are an ancient combination, an example are Mandalas, while the quest to developing new forms of art is an individual expression rather than one based on ancient belief systems.

Paintings depicting 3-dimensional and arial views were abundant in an exhibition of current Chinese art at NAMOC, the National Museum of Chinese Art, in Beijing in March 2011.

Cheng, Wen-ji, Embracing, 114.5 cm x 200 cm, oil on canvas, 2009

This bowl, seen from a distance across the room, looked startingly 3-D. We stepped close to admire its geometric perfection. more… »

The two paintings of Edward Hopper, shown here, are part of the current exhibition in the Whitney Museum of American Art: Edward Hopper and His Time. Much has been written about Hopper’s usage of light and shadow. I will point out his usage of incongruencies that further accentuates the sense of isolation and alienation that Hopper’s painting are known for.

more… »

Subjected to the first exercise from Nicolaides ‘The Natural Way to Draw’, I drew the contours of the icicles following Nicolaides instruction:

Focus your eyes on some point – any point will do – along the contour of the model. Place the point of your pencil on the paper. Imagine that your pencil is touching the model instead of the paper. Without taking your eyes of the model, wait until you are convinced that the pencil is touching that point on the model upon which your eyes are fastened. Then move your eye slowly along the contour of the model and move the pencil slowly along the paper. As you do this, keep the conviction that the pencil is actually touching the contour. Be guided more by the sense of touch than by sight. THIS MEANS THAT YOU MUST DRAW WITHOUT LOOKING AT THE PAPER, continuously looking at the model.

First, using plants as my models, I was surprised, during the exercise, at the affection I felt for their leaves. Next, I tried the trees outside the window, and then the icicles suspended from the roof.

Being, so far, more of a photographer than a draftsman, I took a snapshot of this wintry scene.

Celebrating a promising event in my life by posting still another painting of South Manitou, freshly retouched. Same format as before.