This is the third of four posts about the process that starts with a collage as a source of inspiration and ends with a painting. The early steps of the process were outlined in the November 15 post, titled “Colliding with Collage.” We’ve seen how Beatrice and Naomi adapted the process to make their paintings. Now, let’s look at Elaine’s adventure.
From the several collages Elaine had made, she was most attracted to the 
red one. She brought a 24 x 30 canvas to class. The red paint she started to work with immediately appealed to her and was never changed throughout the painting process. It remained a given to which the other color choices had to relate. When all the elements from the collage were roughly painted in, we talked about the use of a horizon line as an orienting device. There was no such line in the collage, but the painting seemed to call for a horizon. It came about, not as a line, but as a differentiation in hue, the top being more orange than the red ground below. While the elements in the collage referred to clouds, skyscrapers, and roads, once these were rendered in paint on canvas, they lost their literalness and seemed to demand their own painterly existence. This became Elaine’s struggle, a challenge none of the other students had to face.
The first breakthrough came when the cluster of black vertical rectangles achieved a coherence and completion that set the visual language for the whole painting. When a painting has found its language, the artist is more than half way there. Now the painting has taken a stand; it’s become a partner in a dialogue. From this point on, we’re merely solving problems. Merely, ha.
The blue elements on the top easily adjusted to the pictorial language Elaine had found, but the other elements did not. Yet, they were there, filled a lot of space, and had also taken up a lot of her time. For those reasons it was difficult to give them up. If they were eliminated, there would be a large “empty space,” a concept that sounds chilly and lazy. As it turned out, however the “empty space” adds drama to the whole composition. There is no such thing as empty space. That space on the left directs the eye to the black vertical elements on the right. The blue elements on the top direct us to the left. Once the thin white lines at the bottom were added, we had a distinctive foreground because the white pops forward in our perception. The result is that the eye circles through the composition. While we have a strong sense of foreground-middleground-background and a feeling of deep space in a landscape, the painting does not pin us down in specific references to known reality. The painting’s intellectual severity is counteracted by the tactile, emotional attraction of its texture. When she painted over the diverse elements the painting had inherited from the collage, the artist did not obliterate them completely (which would have been easy), but left them “bleeding” through, an effect called pentimento, which adds emotional depth. (Pentimento deserves a full discussion, planned for future posts.)
This painting underwent its most drastic development during the last class period. It shows the most dramatic departure from the original collage of any of the students’ projects. Elaine struggled for six hours in the previous classes and then, finally and suddenly, the painting came through with clarity and integrity.
artamaze by Katherine Hilden 