Working Title: Hortensia, or Untitled or maybe even more pretentious Untitled (Hortensia)
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 4 x 5 ft.
Description:
The work is based off a short story by Isabel Allende, the character's name is Hortensia. I'm currently trying to decide if this information is relevant or not -- I don't want to have to explain/retell the short story every time someone views the painting -- I use the short stories as a starting point for content, but I don't consider this painting a narrative. I want it to evoke the feelings, themes or overall sentiment the story has, without being about the story. With that said I do like the idea of naming the paintings after characters or the titles of stories since it alludes to process.
Questions I have:
What themes do you find in the work, what feelings does it evoke? What is working and what's not? What effect does the constant layering have on the viewer?
Again, this is a work in progress -- I'm wrapping it up -- maybe 2 more work sessions I think, but there is room for change so be open on what's not working.
Thanks!
Sarah
Pushed from dark to light, emerging, escaping, sometimes stuck in the middle, in a white void of nothingness. Still seeing landscape, fluidity (fluids?), shiny wrapping paper, uncertainty (inherent in abstraction, so kind of a pointless point), attempting to form a structure, structure engulfed in chaos. These could all be inherent in abstraction, especially layered abstraction. An aspect of time, physical and metaphorical. Alive. There's an action happening outside of the left side of the frame and I believe it's better than the origin, the right side. You've explained to me this story and I think maybe it's subconsciously revealing itself in how I am viewing this, so this could all be totally biased. No specific themes but generalities and assumptions.
ReplyDeleteI might try this again later.
P.S. I like the pretentious title.
I don't know about this narrative so I can be your uninformed viewer. Words that come to mind are struggle and tension. Maybe after image, I see this doubling of two similar images that seem to repel in some areas and attach in others. The right side if this painting seems heavier, from how the paint is handled and the temperature of color. I like some of the areas that seem less covered on the left side but its hard for my eye to go to travel that way. Maybe bringing more over lap from the mid-bottom left toward the right?
ReplyDeleteI don't know if this is helpful and this is just my initial reaction, let's see more!
I like the idea of working your painting from ideas you have about a fictional character-- I think that has a lot of potential to communicate an array of ideas to your viewers. It’s interesting to think that by using a novel you're reading to direct the piece, you ultimately leave the viewer in the dark about how you "got there" unless they themselves have read the Allende novel you reference, recognize the name Hortensia, and can draw similar (or conflicting) visual connections towards that character. Otherwise, we see an arbitrary word (I say word because I think Hortensia comes off less as a name to westerners like ourselves) that doesn’t quite explain or give further meaning to the marks on the canvas, but still somehow serves to classify, or name the image.
ReplyDeleteTwo things to think about for future works in this avenue of thought: Does Hortensia interest you because it is not immediately recognizable as a “name”? If there was a character you felt strongly towards, but was named “Ashley”, would it still interest you as a title? Is the “lost in translation” quality exciting to you, or do you want us mentally on the same page—viewing the work as a character itself, with personality, history, pathos?
That leads me to my second point: if we’re looking at this piece in the context of the character, or rather, looking at it as an individual; I want more and more to see the painting “breathe”. I want to see the life of the painting—it’s existence as a temporal being. This is already happening in many places with your glazes and geometric obstructions (which allow my eyes to go in, come out, recognize growth, structure, weakness) but I want to familiarize myself with this painting as I would familiarize myself with a person. This painting should take time to get to know. I want it to breathe-- not breathe so that you can see raw necessarily… but greater visibility of old ideas underneath new discoveries. Like a growing person; how you age in to adulthood but in many aspects you can see what you’ve maintained from childhood. What you’ve come to learn in the aging process. What you still don’t know.