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"Togetherness is a Lens"- thoughts behind the painting

"Togetherness is a Lens"- thoughts behind the painting

 

 

Here is my artist statement that accompanies this piece:

"Togetherness is a lens.

Your strength is my weakness. 

Your weakness, my strength. 

We are not an average of each other. 

Instead we take turns in reflecting the light/hiding in the shadows.

Our proclamations of love are irrelevant,

overshadowed by binding light. 

Details fade into glory."

The essence of this piece is togetherness, and feeling close to a person.  So close, you overlap.  I also see it as facets, like in a diamond or crystal.  I chose the colors because they seemed so rich and real and earthy, and not airy or too invisible or unreal. I also chose to offset the warm reds and yellows with a bit of blue, signifying something completely different along the lines of symbolism. They represent the fruition of how the two have come together. That's why they are few and spread throughout. I tried to make them look natural. Just like how the fruition of togetherness is a very natural thing.

This painting started out as a merging of two photos digitally. I overlapped them, and then played with transparency. I erased parts of layers to reveal the under image, and of course relied heavily on the glorious undo button(which we do not have the luxury of while working with real paint!) Here are a few process photos to give you an idea of what I mean:

 

Then I used the digital ideas as inspiration to start the painting, completely open to the shifting winds, and to the possibility that it would end up somewhere else visually.  I did do things that made me uncomfortable, but the next session of painting would come around and I would reel it back, conceal it under layers of paint.  That’s the nice thing about oil paint, you can paint layers and layers that cover and no one knows what’s under there. 

 

I saw Picasso’s “Blue Guitarist” at The Art Institute of Chicago, there is a whole other painting under there. You can only see it in person, because you can see the texture of the brushstrokes. You can see the outline. 

 

I think these hidden paintings underneath other paintings are very magical because they give out energy like radio waves. You can’t see them but they are there and they are doing something. I have a quirky painting of a rabbit and there is an stylized African mama and a swaddled baby under there, even upside down. How did that happen? Right? 

 

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