MEDITATIONS ON A MOUNTAIN - IMAGERY

 


In my last entry I noted that adding evocative images pushed my abstract work over into surrealism. I had this painting on my bedroom wall since then and finally decided that I did not like it. So I covered it, but with an almost black grey. Much better, if somewhat sinister:




Yes, the photography is much better, too, with my new mirrorless Sony A6000, he smiled, although I still need to figure out better lighting... Be that as it may, the lines in the bottom area have ceased to look like tall dry grass in a roadside field, though you can still associate the lines with your knowledge of various grasses and whatever that brings up in you. And that is what I want to achieve, a feeling that guides you to what's familiar to you.

You may have noticed also that the mountain outline is once again absent.

However, the conundrum still remains: where to go from here?

As I mull that over I have returned to my mountain motif in a different format. A while ago I made two sketches involving the said outline. One of them I used to explore the AbEx and Cubist idioms in an oil painting:




The sister sketch, which has been knocking around my studio for weeks, I tried to use in another oil painting that was almost white, but as you will see there were too many areas to colour and I got totally fed up trying to keep the almost white register - I hate the waiting involved in oil painting and white just seems to take forever! It wasn't working so I stopped, let it go.

A few days ago I decided to use the same sketch in a completely different manner:


The idea of whether or not colours should match or define the shapes they're associated with has always fascinated me. I'm well aware of Corbusier's and Leger's work in this respect, especially as I much admire the latter. Here is a painting by Ali Atmaca, a Turkish artist whose studio I visit at least once a year, that shows another solution. He paints in other styles, too, but I like these:




I grappled with this in a series of works in gouache and it resurfaced in a different manner in this painting from three years ago:




The fractured shapes left behind by armed conflict on the rectangular structures make a pattern of their own, contrasting with them despite the fact that I tipped over one them. My latest abstract differs little in concept, stylistically that is. So the question then arises what happens if I retain the mountain motif as a linear expression alongside others and apply colourful gestures over them, rather like Rauschenberg did over his photographic collages?

We'll see if that is one of the exits available to me.

I look forward to your comments on this issue, thank you.


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