Yesterday I posted some of my paintings and a master copy of Khan’s Ground Fog to practice using large, simplified swaths of color to create abstractions of landscapes.
I like abstraction and simplification of things in paintings, but pure abstraction seldom attracts me. Recognition of whatever a painting is trying to depict seems to be essential for me to want to look at a painting, but as I study colorism / colorfield / abstract expressionism more, I find that sometimes pure color by itself can be enticing. I used to detest Rothko’s work, but now I am finding it quite entrancing as I appreciate the subtle qualities of color, and colors adjacent to one another, a lot more.
With this in mind, along with observing the work of Wolf Kahn, Richard Mayhew, Hashim Akib, and Andrew Faulkner, I painted this field of sunflowers.
I started out with big color fields for the sky, trees, and sunflower field using the basic colors of blue (sky), dark green (trees), and yellow and green (sunflower field). From there, I really worked to keep the foreground simple enough as the treeline, mountains, and sky do not beg for detail.
Initially I wanted to paint dots to represent the center of the sunflowers, but in the mindset of color planes, I didn’t. It paid off, but I was still not happy with how the sunflowers and foreground areas looked. Thus, some dabs – but bigger ones, brush strokes instead of dabs to be more accurate. Negative painting, too, and straight lines to represent the sunflower stalks. The buildings and poles were added at the end to add interest to a very horizontally oriented painting.
I am quite pleased with this painting. Goals were accomplished and my own style emerged here. I also did a lot of thinking about colors, how to paint a straight telephone pole (put a card down and run the paint brush along the edge), atmospheric perspective. Simplifying was difficult, but the broad swaths of color with variations within worked. In short, I have a bit of an abstract landscape in which the subject matter is recognizable, but not realistic. If I want a photographic rendition of something, I’ll just take a picture with my camera!