Blog

In studying Cézanne, I see something I love: a form of what I call "STRUCTURALISM": ELEMENT, OBJECT AND SHAPE DISTRIBUTION CREATED IN THE COURSE OF PAINTING, especially in the initial stages of the paint session. Also regarding BALANCE, I love Kandinsky's "Line and dot" thinking. Of course regarding composition, I've read Edgar Paynes little book, and look for the TEETER TOTTER in composition. But more than that, I love the idea of LIVE DESIGNING: design as you go, with repetitions, point-counterpoint, echoes, line-and-dot, shape-distribution, ... it's like jazz where in the suggestion is made manifest, which inspires other suggestions to be made manifest, paths to further explore. The internal becomes external. Like Jazz, a good painting is a flirtatious invitation, a revolving door that's easy to enter and be swept along, however, it does require effort and like all love-affairs, after a while they get complicated and the only way to resolve the situation is that the lovers must fundamentally change, be transformed. Viola, intimacy! The idea is to cause the painting itself to incorporate a conversation, a give-and-take, a call-and-response. It's the on-going punch-counterpunch exchange inside the painting which pulls the viewer into the conversation. This "internal-to-external-to-internal" cycle is really a progressive spiral and is what makes the master painters' works so rewarding and valuable. PS, when I mention "element" above, I  refer to Hue, Value, Texture, Temperature, Edges, then Mass and Line.