Right Angles and Motion

Yes, it’s all rectangles and squares. What an interesting challenge! Wherever you look, it’s all 90° and you think this should look stable and fixed. Not so. It’s all motion and speed. How do you make a painting consisting of right angles so lively?! Try to look away. Gotcha!

Our visual apparatus evolved to detect motion. Frogs can only see what moves. If you don’t want to be associated with frogs in your family tree, try to remember what it’s like to sit in a train while reading. It’s hard, because your eyes are attracted to the blur and motion at the window. Maybe a painting that simulates the effect of motion holds our attention for the same reason. But this painting does not illustrate motion.
Let’s look at an illustration of motion.

Here we have a specific instance, a narrative of motion. Horses and riders on a beach can evoke the memory of a beach, the smell of the ocean, the energy of young men and the power of horses. Notice that all these are specific memories and as such they’re limited and limiting.
In the painting,  our experience is deeper. Without a narrative as a hook and employing a most restrained composition, it moves us to introspect on how perception itself works.  We have to ask how this is possible.  And that’s endlessly fascinating.
Painting by Maria Palacios, 30×40. Oil on canvas.
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What Next?

That’s how it started. What happens when the conversation starts with rectangles and squares? Because, you know, that’s what this is, a conversation. So, he puts down these rectilinear shapes and colors and then what? Then he goes across the room and looks. Just sits and looks. Listens, might be the better word. Because, the painting tells him what to do next. Suddenly he gets up and puts in lines, like that spiral on the lavender square. Then he lets it dry for a week, comes back, sits, listens/looks, gets up and puts in the flowers and vase. Whoa, some realism! Where did that come from? From the conversation, you square! So surprising and so right. Still not there. Let it dry and sit some more. Next week he created the illusion of a fluted column on the left, just enough three-dimensionality in that to keep the vase and flowers company. Now the conversation has come to some insight, can’t diagram, analyze or explain it, but it feels complete. That’s the painting process. Mysterious and so right.———————————–

All contents copyright (C) 2010 Katherine Hilden. All rights reserved.
http://www.khilden.com
http://facefame.wordpress.com
http://katherinehilden.wordpress.com
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