How can drips feel energetic?! It’s all down, down. That’s true, but if the format of the painting is vertical, that verticality in itself conveys energy. Like a person standing up.
Compare the vertical format to the horizontal. Here’s a horizontal passage from the painting. Same drips, but the feeling is not energetic. The horizontal format is restful and the drips lack energy.
Another view would be the following, where the drip lines are horizontal. Horizontal lines are inherently more restful, like a person lying down. You can see that this view is more restful than the original.
Now go back to the original at the top. The drips are like a torrent, stormy and very energetic, indeed.
Painting by Keren Vishny, acrylic on canvas, 40”x30”
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I tried turning it upside down and noticed two mountain shapes that were even more dynamic and thereby relieving some of the down down down feeling of the drips …feeling like it’s going down. Somehow it seems to be less energetic then with the dripping down. Maybe that’s because the flow is more evident with the drips going down. The flow might be key to the energy in the painting.
Interesting–while I agree that the first view is the ‘best’, I don’t see the horizontal view as more ‘restful’. Instead it seems almost as energetic, with the horizontal ‘drips’ bursting out of the darkness on the left into the lighter area on the right. The first view (full, vertical) has the additional tension of the light area ‘hovering’ over the darkness along with all the energetic drips…