Art & Perception

On Monday, I painted two plein aire oils from the uppermost level of a parking garage. On Tuesday I attended a crit session with some other painters that I meet with regularly. OF course, I showed them the paintings.

I managed to remember to photograph the first painting twice — once as it emerged from the garage session, and then again after I had been through the critique and had tweaked it in the studio. I didn’t do a lot to this  painting in my second go-round, but when I finished I was concerned about the loss of some of the “naive” quality of the red building. Here are images of the two versions:

Library Parking Garage, View South (first draft) 12 x 16, oil on board more… »

My apologies for not being more visible in this discussion, but it’s been more fun just kibitzing.

But I’ve noticed that Morandi has become front-of-mind of late; to the extent that his characteristics are influencing what gets my attention. Today I was cutting pieces of plexiglass to make into chains. I was lining them up when – behold – there was a little Morandi assembly.

Frankly, there’s little resemblance. No painterliness is in evidence, but things are arranged after a fashion and one can see an intersection of table and wall. For some reason this was enough to trigger the association.

The plexiglass blocks go into the likes of this prototype seen here in a basket of apples. I’m tempted to make up some shapes similar to those used by Morandi – this as an adjunct to Steve’s experiments with the bottles.

I was going to ask rhetorically if you find your focus and sensitivities influenced by these discussions on A&P, but I know the answer already. For me, the scanner of limited attention, it’s the concentration. Any comments?

Winter has come early and I’ve tried to stay busy in an effort to ward off hibernation.

I may have already mentioned some of my hobby horse notions, such as trying to do something aesthetic with the unique circumstance of two times and plus two both equaling four. I’m not entirely sure what this may have to do with art, but I have modeled it often enough in an effort to make it fit in somehow.

The new version was inspired by some plexiglass that I came across in florescent orange/red. If I look around long enough I’m bound to find a French curve or triangle in this material in a drawer somewhere. I’ve always associated that look with things technical and graphic and the scrap led me back to the plus/times hobby horse.

The key to this project has been the notion of a plus sign that can rotate freely or that will be placed twixt addition and multiplication. I’ve tried placing the plus sign on a little motor or in a generated breeze so that it might spin. I tried adopting a shower knob/handle set into an ersatz tiled wall that included the twos. Such nonsense. Somewhere along the line the equals four part of the equation was dropped.

So now it’s an exercise in plastic with a puff ball (operator?) in high density poliethelene set askance. I might end up with nothing more than a set of twos on the wall. Any comments?

I have mentioned the Intermuseum Conservation Association in the past. They have a website entitled the Art Materials Information and Education Network (AMIEN.org) that contains a number of forums touching on the material side of things. I plan to drop in from time to time as I have questions of my own. Note: they are having what appear to be spam issues and are taking no new registrations for now. But That will surely change for the better.

Among my recent plastic acquisitions is a substantial mirrored sheet. The grandkids like to see their fun house reflections as it is all bendy. It’s an old notion and applied to exhaustion, but I decided to see what the camera would catch reflected in it.

I’m thinking of hauling a smaller version of the sheet around with me.

A new capability since our upgrade of WordPress is the tagging feature. Tags are like categories: labels to describe the post. But unlike categories, tagging is free-form; you can use any words or phrases you like, whether or not they’ve been previously used. Just as with categories, clicking on a tag label will show other posts bearing that tag. So it’s a great way to find similar content without having to search on a particular term. Searching doesn’t always work well, as a post might contain the search term without it being very characteristic of the post content.

You’ll notice in the sidebar (possibly scrolling down a bit) a list of recent tags, with their frequency indicated by intensity of blue and font size. That provides a snapshot of recent topics which can be more informative than our sometimes cryptic post titles. Clicking any of these also brings you to a list of posts so tagged.

So far, I’ve tagged just my last few posts to show how it works. We need some other tags in there! Feel free to go back and tag any old posts, and use tags if you like for future posts. On the post edit page, tags are added immediately below the compose area, right next to the category assignment list.

I hope tags will offer an easier way to find posts of interest and ones related to a post you’ve enjoyed. Let’s see if it works out that way. Meanwhile, any comments or suggestions would be appreciated!

Last weekend I accompanied family members on a picnic along the waterfront and a trip to an apple orchard.

The skyline is plainly visible from the west bank of the river and I took a stock photograph of it. I then Photo Shopped this treatment. Makes me think of a mineral specimen. I’m feeling the itch to do another foam painting and this, or something similar, may serve as the source image.

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