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Sunday, July 1, 2007

Flight of the Bumble Bee




Well I'm all done! Yeah! I started this blog for experimenting and doing this demo certainly has been a new experience for me. I so appreciate every one's comments and encouragement which made this demo super fun for me. I set about this painting with a couple of objectives in mind. One was to challenge the 'norm' of thin background. My background here, (or dandy lion field) is very thick and broken, the sheer fabric is painted thin and with less brushwork except in the lace and black dots which are very thick. The challenge being making the thin come forward and the thicker recede. To add to this challenge, the color I wanted to pull forward was black against the light warm background. Yikes! During this process I had to ask myself, why do we have to create this receding background??? The more I paint, the more I seem to find a desire to incorporate an abstract influence into my paintings or at least in my thought processes. Why can't the 'background' be just as important as the 'subject matter'? In abstract painting every part of the canvas is 'active' (if that is the right choice of words). I know we need restful spots on the canvas, that everything can't be equally important, but with representational art can our objects be so recognizable that our eyes are naturally drawn there and other areas of the painting be more than just background? Anybody??? Am I crazy today or what?

8 comments:

Brendy Vaughn said...

I love process photos. I've enjoyed looking at the progess of this piece. It's beautiful.

Brendy Vaughn said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Debbie Miller said...

this came out so beautiful. I have really liked watching the progress. I am amazed at your commitment, what is next? :-)

Anonymous said...

Hi Karen!

My internet service has been down for days, so I'm at an internet cafe.
I love the finished painting!
I don't know much about abstract art, but, the subject stands out despite the bright background because black and bright green is really high contrast. And you warmed up some parts of the black.

Somehow you pulled it off. Fab!

Have a great 4th of July.

Anonymous said...

Hey! Thanks for adding me to your list of links! Cool. You're on mine too.

Mary Sheehan Winn said...

I totally understood that. All areas of the canvas need to be well constructed. Theses paintings are beautiful. I like the challenging subject matter.

Anonymous said...

the translucent aspect of this painting is the bomb! Its so convincing. These are the paintings that i first saw of yours... before the boxes.

Tamiami Cleaners said...

Nice share, thanks for posting