artamaze by Katherine Hilden

Posted in Composition, literalness, Pattern, Quotes, Seeing, Technique and Demo, Therapy | Tagged attention, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Nicolas Malebranche | 1 Comment »

Light Slivers

November 21, 2020 by katherinehilden

After you’ve identified this photo as a so-what view of a lawn, check that off and see if this might have some formal element worth noticing.

It does. You can see it better in black/white.

The light zig-zags down from top to bottom with increasing looseness as if it came from some juggler’s pen light.

That’s it? Yes, for this little exercise in seeing it’s enough to notice that the slivers of light appear to be superimposed on a surface.

The light slivers exist on one plane and the grass on another. If you also notice that the grass makes vertical lines and the light forms horizontal lines, you’ve got a composition worth contemplating.

I’d like to print this up in high resolution, 6 ft high, and position it at the end of a long hall way.

My camera clicked it in color. We are used to seeing images in color. But color is not necessarily more powerful than b/w. Do you agree that the b/w is a more stimulating image?

Btw, all this is relevant to both photography and painting. Not such a little exercise, after all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gw7tkgVnRTw

Posted in abstraction, Color, Composition, Illustration, Landscape, Pattern, Seeing, Technique and Demo | Tagged color vs. black/white, composition, landscape, light effect | Leave a Comment »

Pierre Soulage

November 14, 2020 by katherinehilden

Even as a child, Soulage says, he liked black because it made the rest of the paper look all the more white.

When he was sixty, his paintings became all black, a black he calls outrenoir, which translates roughly as “beyond black.”

He doesn’t think of himself as painting with black paint, but with light. The light reflects off the thick, textured black paint and that is what you see. “I made these because I found that the light reflected by the black surface elicits certain emotions in me. These aren’t monochromes. The fact that light can come from the color which is supposedly the absence of light is already quite moving, and it is interesting to see how this happens.”

He was born December 24, 1919. Approaching 101, he says he’s looking forward to more ideas to come to him.

The Musée Soulage, in Rodez , Southern France, is devoted to his work.

I recommend the following links for more images of his work and of interviews with him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azb6K-R_q8M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylZGz3NuidA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eydws5jJ6ys

https://www.google.com/search?q=pierre%20soulages&tbm=isch&tbs=rimg:CR8aTYMxIqhvYaEYr1reAWak&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBsQuIIBahcKEwjQo_2WloPtAhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQFw&biw=1294&bih=836#imgrc=R9rQFXyA7wEFTM&imgdii=4-kpwBo3-mMrfM

https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ALeKk01-AFktcIGO9n0dcMT9GRy-irtSdw:1605223481914&source=univ&tbm=isch&q=pierre+soulages&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj3oLK7k_7sAhVSgK0KHVh7AGIQiR56BAgPEBA&biw=1378&bih=836#imgrc=Tj_-pYUAPfkJYM&imgdii=AM1Kn5-I38wLFM

Two days ago I was reminded of Pierre Soulage when I took the photo posted as “Not Levitating.” When I framed the shot I saw the uncanny light that was coming through the front doors glass panel in late afternoon. On the photo, which is unedited, the light “column” at the left appears so substantial that its weight equals that of the blue sphere, which would otherwise have to dominant the composition.

https://artamaze.wordpress.com/2020/11/12/not-levitating/

Posted in abstraction, Achievement, Color, Composition, Imagination, inspiration, Semiotics, Technique and Demo, Texture | Tagged beyond black, outrenoir, Pierre Soulage, Rodez | Leave a Comment »

Not Levitating

November 12, 2020 by katherinehilden

Time to watch “Blow Up” again.

Posted in Composition, inspiration, Seeing, Semiotics, Surreal | Tagged Blow Up, Michelangelo Antonioni | 1 Comment »

Depth Perception in Brown County

November 8, 2020 by katherinehilden

The illusion of depth and perspective in an image is so beguiling that we—smart, scientific and skeptical—willingly suspend disbelief and get sucked into the illusion of receding space created on a flat surface.

You don’t have to trek through Ecuador, like Fredric Erwin Church, to get this thrill. Step out your front door and there you’ll find receding space as far as the eye can see even if that’s only to the end of the block. Your camera will aid you because it will flatten the view for you, i.e. it will compact the three-dimensional reality in front of you into a framed two-dimensional surface.

When you treat yourself to a hike in the nearby state park, well, the phrase “as far as they eye can see” is ecstatically notched up.

The most powerful part is (1) because it’s the closest plant to the viewer and it sets the sense of scale. All other plants—and that’s all we see—are therefore seen in relation to (1), with the result that we sense how far back they are.

You can compare this analysis to that of Fredric Edwin Church’s painting in the previous post.

The progression from foreground plants to distant hills –and pine trees way in the distance at upper left–occurs in similar layers. Church manipulates the gradations of color and light to heightened effect and just because he can. In the photo, however, the gradations appear more subtle and to lovers of subtlety that effect may actually be more thrilling than the technique in Church’s painting.

But wait, there’s more. Even before you notice the little plant in the lower left corner, you want to look at this image. It contains an approximation of the Golden Section. You may not even know what that is, but our environment, both cultural and biological, has conditioned you to like this ratio.

The photographer may not have made all these compositional calculations consciously. This sense can be cultivated intuitively.

Knowing how to analyze why this works does not in the least spoil the pleasure of perception. On the contrary, look how it deepens your experience.

(Click image for enlargement.)

Mary Shieldsmith , Brown County State Park, 2020

Posted in Achievement, Composition, Cropping, Illustration, Landscape, Seeing, Technique and Demo | Tagged Brown County State Park, Fredric Edwin Church, Mary Shieldsmith, perspective | Leave a Comment »

Fredric Edwin Church

November 7, 2020 by katherinehilden

This picture was inspired by Church’s second trip to South America in the spring of 1857. Church sketched prolifically throughout his nine weeks travel in Ecuador, and many extant watercolors and drawings contain elements found in this work. The picture was publicly unveiled in New York at Lyrique Hall, 756 Broadway, on April 27, 1859. Subsequently moved to the gallery of the Tenth Street Studio Building, it was lit by gas jets concealed behind silver reflectors in a darkened chamber. The work caused a sensation, and twelve to thirteen thousand people paid twenty-five cents apiece to file by it each month. The picture was also shown in London, where it was greatly admired as well.

That’s the Met’s paragraph about this painting. The painting measures 66 in x 120 in and can be seen at the Met on Fifth Avenue.

“…any extant watercolors and drawings contain elements found in this work.” In other words, this is what’s called “a composite painting,” meaning it does not represent any view actually seen by the painter. Rather, the painter assembled landscape-snippets from his sketch book into a grand vista of enormous depth.

In (1) we see flowers so close that we can see the veins of leaves. The people in (2) are so far away that they are the size of leaves in (1). In (3) we can make out some houses. The mountain ridges from (4) through (6) become progressively paler to our view because they are farther and farther in the distance. The snow-capped peaks in (7) occupy only a small area of the painting surface, but by the time our attention has progressed from (1) through (6) we know (7) is very, very far away and huge.

It’s a mind boggling trip. Even after you’ve imagined the painter going through his sketch book to select the bits that would be collaged together like this, you will stand in front of this painting with dropped jaw and –well, totally–fall for it. Your mind will toggle between “haha, this is contrived” and “wow, I inhabit this vast mountainous space.” That’s us, with our skepticism and modern irony.

There’s a glib explanation of what modern painting is: pre-moderns believed that a painting was a window through which they saw a scene; us moderns know better, we are fully aware that the painting is a flat surface with paint on it, period.

I don’t think it’s that simple. To see this painting, in 1859, New Englanders traveled to New York in their corsets and starched underwear. Something must have been pinching them all the time, including their shoes, as they stood in front of this dramatically lit huge painting and they knew perfectly well where they were. They were aware that they were not looking through a window frame at a mountain in Ecuador

The past several posts here have been about this duality of “it’s a window, it’s a flat surface.” The duality is nothing new. Perceptive, thinking people have always been puzzled by illusions, I would imagine, going back to Egyptians painting faces on sarcophagi. Western philosophers, starting with Plato, have tried to sort out the distinction between reality and illusion. Psychology and neurology have been nailing it down, but in our subjective experience the puzzle is alive and well. That’s why we make images.

Click on painting for enlargement.

Fredric Erwin Church, 1826-1900

https://www.technologynetworks.com/neuroscience/news/how-do-we-make-sense-of-a-blurry-scene-301542

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Blurry, Contemplate

November 3, 2020 by katherinehilden

Look at this for a minute. Stay calm and slightly amused.

Within seconds, you will notice that the image is becoming a little sharper.

Because your brain is familiar with these shapes it will auto-correct by projecting what you know should be there onto the blurry contours.

You don’t want to strain or overdo this. But as an occasional exercise it can reassure you that all systems are go.

(Click image to enlarge.)

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

This Won’t Sell

November 2, 2020 by katherinehilden

No real estate agent would like this photo. It doesn’t show off the house. No curb appeal! And what’s with the trees!?

Sorry, sir/madam, this picture is not about the house. It’s not even about Halloween.

Well, what then!!! –It’s not about anything.–Sound of doors slamming.

This is the last of three frames I took of this scene. The first two have too much context. Then I saw the juxtaposition of the straight vertical trees and the pumpkins marching horizontally. Click.

I saw an image, a play of lines and dots.

Here’s the first shot, rejected, due to too much information/illustration.

Posted in Achievement, Composition, Cropping, literalness, Pattern | Tagged lines and dots, no curb appeal | 2 Comments »

Walk-Zoom-Click

November 1, 2020 by katherinehilden

The back-lighting stopped me in my tracks. The shadow was as dark as the tree trunk itself. They looked continuous as if they were of the same substance. The lawn looked as if it had been spray painted DA-glo. Mind you, this photo is not tweaked. My phone camera saw this strange light effect. Drama like this is momentary. Click.

I immediately zoomed in. No distraction, no nice residential context with a house. What we get now is…

…a repetition of forms. On the right, spiky triangles. On the left, and spilling onto the big triangle, you see amorphous meanderings.

Do we still have trees, lawn and late afternoon lighting? Yes, we’re still reminded of how wonderful these real lawns in our neighborhoods are.

We also have just the opposite: flat patterns on a flat surface confined in a rectangular frame.

Now it may dawn on you that you’re having an art experience. “Art does not stand for something outside itself” –Fairfield Porter, remember.

You can focus on the picture surface or what it represents, but not both at the same time — as Gombrich said in Art and Illusion.

But you can practice toggling back and forth between the two ways of seeing. Practice that!

Posted in Composition, Cropping, Landscape, literalness, Negative space, Seeing, Technique and Demo | Tagged Art and Illusion, E.H.Gombrich, Fairfield Porter, landscape | Leave a Comment »

Walking in the Neighborhood

October 31, 2020 by katherinehilden

You’re walking in late afternoon when the shadows are very long. You notice that shadows can take strange, aggressive shapes on an expanse of lawn. Click. In the picture the shadow looks even stranger than it did in reality. Why is that?

Walk on. At an intersection you see shadows on the distant lawn. Click.

But you took a wide angle, getting the street into the frame of your camera. It’s merely a documentation of this corner of an unremarkable street.

You raise your arms and you zoom in on the distant lawn. Click. Now you have an image of triangular shapes on a green surface with some rectangle in the upper part of the frame. This is getting interesting. But you still have the street in there.

Now crop the reference to the street because it’s too much context, which makes the image point to something outside itself.

Why is this interesting? Because now you have an image that can be seen two ways: one, as a reference to a green lawn with triangular shadows cast by neighboring buildings and two, as a pattern of geometrical forms that refer to nothing outside of themselves.

If you want to see this duality even more clearly, take out the color.

Now you have an arrangement of shapes that “does not stand for something outside itself.” Is this art? Hmmm, maybe.

On second look, yes. Notice how the image has a unifying texture: the bricks of the wall have specks of black shadows that echo the specks of leaves on the lawn. This unifying texture has nothing to do with what’s being represented. “Art does not stand for something outside itself,” as Fairfield Porter would put it.

You can frame this, hang it on a wall, glance at it in passing and momentarily inhabit the realm of form, which is pure feeling. Like music.