Energetic Drips

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”
All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.
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Gesture and Layering

If you want to paint fast and in layers, acrylic is your best medium. One layer of gestural splashes, as in this painting by Keren Vishny, can dry in about ten minutes. This is quite an exciting way to paint. Though it may seem careless and easy, it is neither. Working like this takes a lot of concentration. It’s like doing a dance step with the same expression but allowing slight variations as long as they fit into the expressive range. Theme and variation.
Above is the finished painting. Here on the right, the almost finished painting, where the vertical drips in the middle were felt to be too insistent, too demanding on the eye because they were uninterrupted. (Enlarge and compare to the finished work.)
The painting can fall into the category “Abstract Expressionism” and also in “All-Over Painting.” When working in this “all-over” mode, patters tend to emerge with one element assuming a starring role. As soon as one element stands out, the all-over feeling is destroyed. The artist must always stand back and see the whole.  It’s  not easy to paint this way.
Painting by Keren Vishny, acrylic on canvas, 40”x30”
All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.
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http://katherinehilden.wordpress.com
http://www.katherinehilden.com
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And a Splash of Green

For the artist, the pleasure and challenge of painting. For the viewer, the pleasure and desire to look. This painting doesn’t leave you alone, you keep associating colors and traveling along the bumpy edges. Just look, for example, how the bits of green keep moving your eye through this painting, even though the red is dominant. (There are splashes of green in the black field, but the camera didn’t pick them up, unfortunately.)
Painting by Keren Vishny, 40×30. Acrylic on canvas
All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.
http://facefame.wordpress.com
http://katherinehilden.wordpress.com
http://www.katherinehilden.com
http://www.khilden.com

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