I've finished my painting of the railroad bridge over the Charles River in Boston (18"X24" on stretched linen) and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I was attempting to set up several themes and I think I succeeded:
1) Triangles in the landscape.
2) Ideas of ugliness and beauty.
3) Text in the landscape, both acceptable and, um, not-completely-acceptable.
4) Art imitating life imitating art, etc.
5) Hard vs soft areas in landscape (and strong contrasts).
The triangle theme is obvious. I'm attracted to strong geometries in the landscape. I always liked geometry in high school, so I guess my mind naturally keys in to that.
The ugliness/beauty theme is rather subjective. Street art is all the rage nowadays (at least with the critics). I like juxtaposing the rather cliché prettiness of sailboats with the edge-of-repectability in grafitti. To be fair, there was a lot more grafitti on the bridge than I included in the painting. The bridge already has a very strong personality, it didn't need any more.
The text in the landscape (bridge and sail) theme is obvious.
In the art imitating life... theme I chose to make art of a real-life scene that includes grafitti (the "Obey" face by Shepard Fairey, patially visible at left) that was created from another's photograph of a real living person (André the Giant). It feels a bit like looking into a mirror reflecting a mirror, then again, and again...
I made many little decisions in bringing this painting to finish from the last posting of it. I minimized the buildings on the left in the distance to keep them from contradicting the perspective of the image. I am still concerned with the 2 tree-covered peninsulas that are in that area. The bigger one is behind the smaller one — that is contrary to perspective, but I think I will live with it. I made sure that the more distant foliage is significantly cooler in color temp to push it back. I kept the sailboats soft (other than the large one) to add to the contrast with the iron-hard bridge. Next up, NOT a bridge!
Like so many, after art school I rejected the tantalizing career path of the “starving,” or, studio artist. Becoming a graphic designer promised a more secure and comfortable lifestyle while still offering creative reward. Now, after many years I’d love nothing more than to get to a position where I can easily side-step into a monetarily-comfortable, but more creatively-satisfying fine art career. It’s not that simple! Here are my reports from the front lines.
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