Susan K Jones Fine Art Photography

Creativity is the Key

Susan K Jones Fine Art Photography

Creativity is the Key

Navigation

Abstract Art Defined

By

abstract view of a white iris

“We are closer to attaining cheerful serenity by simplifying thoughts and figures. Simplifying the idea to achieve an expression of joy. That is our only deed [as artists].”  Henri Matisse

We think of abstract art as being contemporary phenomena but its roots can be traced back to ancient rock paintings, textile patterns, and pottery designs that captured a symbolic reality. More recently, the impressionists and expressionist of the 19th century used numerous abstract techniques to capture emotion and subjectivity.

Abstract art is broadly defined as non-objective and non-representational art. Unlike more traditional genres, abstract art uses the language of shape, form, color, brushstrokes, size, scale, and line, which have no source at all in an external visual reality, to show an alternative visual experience. Its departure from reality can be slight, partial, or complete.

Definitions for abstract art involve ideas that revolve around a departure from reality:

  • Art that alters color and form in conspicuous ways
  • The creation of beautiful effects using pure patterns of form, color, and line
  • Gestural marks with no source at all to an external reality
  • Art that celebrates the process
  • While it may be based on an object, figure, or landscape, the forms have been simplified or schematized
  • Paintings that do not depict a person, place, or thing in the natural world often represent the spiritual and aim to provoke emotion

However it is defined, abstract art challenges us to interpret an image that, in no way, resembles the kind of images our brain is programmed to understand. A study by neuroscientist, Eric Kandel, proposes that because our brain must work harder and in a different way to understand abstract art, people often find it intimidating.

History of New Year’s Resolutions

By

New Year’s is a time of celebration, filled with traditions that go back 4,000 years. We have parties, special foods, fireworks, resolutions, and since 1907, a large ball that drops in NYC.

Babylonians celebrated the New Year in March when they planted with an eleven day religious festival. Babylonians made resolutions to curry favor with the gods: return borrowed objects and pay off debt.

In 46 BC, Julius Caesar added two months to the calendar and began the new year on January 1st to honor its namesake, Janus, the Roman god of new beginnings. Janus had two heads, one looking forward (future) and one looking backward (past).

These traditions, practiced mostly in the West, have lasted a long time. They are no longer religious so instead of making promises to the gods, we make them to ourselves. Defining resolution as a firm decision to do or not to do something, we resolve to improve ourselves and our life.

2016 was quite a year and our country was seriously divided. It’s time to embrace another definition of resolution: the action of solving a problem, dispute, or contentious matter. Instead of losing weight as #1, change it to spending more time with people who matter.

After reading through lists of resolutions, here are a few new ones to consider:

  • Stop procrastinating
  • Meet new people everyday
  • Stop judging
  • Go for daily walks
  • Volunteer and give more to charity
  • Let go of grudges
  • Travel more
  • Be more responsible
  • Face your fears and insecurities
  • Express yourself artistically
  • Consider adopting a pet
  • Shop locally, support small businesses
  • Support the arts

The artists at 311 Gallery wish you luck with whatever resolutions you make this year. While most resolutions are abandoned, sharing your goals with others will help you succeed. We wish you good fortune in 2017.

Winter Blahs

By

Feeling low? Energy flagging? Welcome to the bleakest 31 days of the year.

Overall January is a boring month; it is National Weight Awareness Month, National Oatmeal Month, and Dry January in Britain, what a time for no alcohol! It’s ironic that January kicks off the New Year with celebrations and is a time for self reflection and hope. 

New Year’s Day is a time of celebration, filled with traditions that go back 4,000 years. We have parties, special foods, fireworks, resolutions, and since 1907, a large ball that drops in NYC.

In 46 BC, Julius Caesar added two months to the calendar and began the New Year on January 1st to honor its namesake, Janus, the Roman god of new beginnings. Janus had two heads, one looking forward (future) and one looking backward (past).

New Year’s traditions, practiced mostly in the West, have lasted a long time. They are no longer religious so instead of making promises to the gods, we make them to ourselves. Defining resolution as a firm decision to do or not to do something, we resolve to improve ourselves and our life.

2018 was quite a year with our country seriously divided. Perhaps it’s time to embrace another definition of resolution: the action of solving a problem, dispute, or contentious matter. Instead of losing weight as #1, change it to spending more time with people who matter and listening to others.

 After reading through lists of resolutions, here are a few more new ones to consider:

•             Stop procrastinating

•             Meet new people everyday

•             Stop judging

•             Go for daily walks

•             Volunteer and give more to charity

•             Let go of grudges

•             Travel more

•             Be more responsible

•             Face your fears and insecurities

•             Express yourself artistically

•             Consider adopting a pet

•             Shop locally, support small businesses

•             Support the arts

After the holidays end, the doldrums set in. Doldrums was once the term used to describe the long difficult journey faced by sailors when there was no wind to push them on their way. Today, we associate the doldrums with the sluggish and depressed feelings we get in the depth of winter when there is nothing to push us on our way.

How to cope? Here are some great suggestions (edited for the art lover):

  • Exercise – bundle up and go for a walk around your favorite art district
  • Meet up with friends and do something cheerful like visit your favorite art district
  • Craving comfort food? Check out special events at your local galleries, they often have great comfort food and a little wine.
  • Indulge a little, buy something for yourself. What better than art!
  • Organize, throw out and decorate; sounds like a great time for a new painting or two.
  • Re-do part of your interior; need some new paintings, sculpture, pottery?
  • Have friends over, cook something you’ve never made, play in the snow, then sit by the fire and admire your new art.

 Of course you can hibernate; binge-watch Netflix; spend the month reading in the bathtub.  But whatever you do, don’t crawl back into your hole.

Get out and soak up some sun, schedule some fun and indulge just a little.

Abstract Art

By

“Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot see physically with his eyes.” – Arshile Gorky

Ask people what sort of art they find the most intimidating and they’ll generally say abstract. This was certainly true for me until I spent some time with it. The term abstract is often applied to art when ‘impossible to understand’ is meant.

So, what is abstract art? The adjective abstract means something that exists in thought or idea rather than the physical or concrete. Applied to art, it describes a visual language of shape, form, color and line that is used to create a composition independent of visual reference; one without the logic of perspective or a visible reality.

Abstract art is non-figurative, non-objective, and non-representational which means it has stripped away the real-life, expected visuals and makes our brain work harder at a subconscious level. Our brain has to function in a less comfortable, more puzzled way to find meaning.

German artist, Wassily Kandinsky, is considered the first true abstract artist. He is best known for his color theory and attaching emotion to his vivid use of color. Kandinsky saw a relationship between his paintings and music. Music is expressive without representing the real world, through patterns of sound. His paintings contain no recognizable objects yet represent the real world through patterns of form, color, and line. He called his paintings ‘compositions’ which is a fitting description of abstract art.

But abstract art is not a current phenomenon, it goes back in history to ancient rock paintings, textile patterns and pottery designs that captured symbolic meanings. Contemporary abstract art emerged in the early 20th century and includes Cubism, Fauvism, Orphism, German Expressionism, and Abstract Expressionism.

As the world has become a smaller place, abstract art has grown. Artists have gained access to other cultures and have been exposed to alternative ways to describe visual experiences. And as technology, science, and philosophy have grown, we see artists encompassing these fundamental changes. Abstract art’s growth can be seen as a response to and reflection of the growing abstraction of social relations and the preoccupation of the social and intellectual areas in all of Western culture.

When you experience abstract art, you are experiencing one of the purest forms of expression. The subject before you is derived entirely from the artist’s mind as opposed to being copied from the real world. The artist is using color to evoke and communicate emotion without the constraint of form; describing a visual experience that is a departure from reality.

Here are some thoughts to keep in mind when viewing abstract art to avoid the feeling of ‘impossible to understand’.

  • The abstraction may be slight, partial, or 100% abstraction
  • Figures, objects, or landscapes may be simplified – 3-dimensional perspective is flattened
  • Gestural marks or geometric shapes may be the subject of the painting along with color, size, scale, brushstrokes, and the process of creation
  • This is art for art’s sake – it is purely about the creation of beautiful effects
  • Not all abstract art however, is designed to make you feel good; it resonates with the social issues of the day
  • Color or form may be altered in conspicuous ways like a turquoise tree
  • Light is often used as a mechanism to alter visual perception
  • Abstract art often goes beyond the material world and represents the spiritual
  • Above all, it stresses the role of imagination and the unconscious as essential creative factors

How ever it is defined, abstract art challenges us to interpret an image that, in no way, resembles the kind of images our brain is programmed to understand. A study by neuroscientist, Eric Kandel, proposes that because our brain must work harder and in a different way to understand abstract art, people often find it intimidating.

Side note: The CIA, the Cold War, and Abstract Expressionism

When I Goggled Abstract Expressionism, I found many links to the CIA and the Cold War. My curiosity was aroused! I was a child during the Cold War; I remember the bomb shelters and Russia. The Cold War was so much more; it was an idea, an image and a propaganda war – a war of the heart and mind.

Russia did not allow freedom of expression in any form thus its art, Socialist Realism, was stylized, rigid, and confined. The CIA saw Abstract Expressionism as the ideal opportunity to show the world our wealth of creativity, intellectual freedom, and cultural power; our superiority over Russia. Because most Americans did not like non-realistic art, the CIA’s project was Top Secret! Millionaires like Nelson Rockefeller (MOMA), William Paley (CBS & CIA), and Julius Fleischmann served as conduits for the CIA’s money; serving as the head of foundations set up by the CIA to promote US culture.

While the CIA’s promotion certainly didn’t hurt, critics strongly feel that Abstract Expressionism would have flourished on its own.

The Art of Plein Air

By

A landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment…but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life – the light and the air, which varies continually… it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.”  – Claude Monet 

River Reflections by Christine Duprez Young

Plein air conjures up the romantic notion of Paris in the mid-19th century; the lifestyle of Montmartre where the writers and artists of the day congregated and the Impressionist movement was born. While artists had painted outdoors for centuries, things began to change in 1830 with the Barbizon School followed by the Impressionists.

Prior to the 1840s, artists created rough sketches, drawings and small paintings outside, on location, to take back to the studio to use in creating large landscapes. These studies, or etudes, were painted quickly to capture the essence of a scene through the colors and mood of the location.

Then Winsor & Newton invented the collapsible tin paint tube in 1841. Moist watercolors and a collapsible easel known as the French box easel, followed, giving artists easy access to the materials they needed to create larger works outdoors. Tube paints contained an array of vibrant pigments contributing to innovative experiments in color theory, something the Impressionists are well known for.

The art movements that embraced plein air felt that painting en plein air was the only way to capture the natural light, shade and color of nature. Because plein air paintings are painted quickly, they often are created with loose brushstrokes and less detail, achieving the impression of open air and spontaneity. Plein air artists also abandoned traditional techniques of chiaroscuro, modeling, and perspective, creating deliberately informal compositions that captured a moment in time. Light became the subject of the painting as it changed the shapes and textures of the surroundings, showing the optical effects of light on the color of a landscape at any given moment. Artists, like Claude Monet, studied how the effects of light altered ones’ perception of the world by working on series of paintings of a singular subject, captured at different times of the day, over several days.

While plein air painting has never stopped, it had a resurgence in the 1980s and appears to be an unstoppable movement as tens of thousands of people around the world take up this art form. Some equate the current plein air movement to a lifestyle; one that is social, relaxing, meditative, mentally challenging, and stimulating. There can be challenges such as bugs, animals, weather, and inquisitive onlookers but if you are interested in spending time in nature painting, here are a few tips to get you started:

  • Travel light – if you are just starting, colored pencils, pastels, or pan watercolors and a sketchbook are all you need
  • Simplify your palette – you can create all the colors you need with cyan, magenta, yellow, indigo and white
  • Use found water
  • Bring bug spray
  • Don’t wear sunglasses – they will alter your color perception; try a hat or a large white umbrella like the Impressionists used

Why Black and White?

By

Why black and white? Since the introduction of color photography, people have questioned the aesthetics of black and white. But artists in all media continue to return to a black and white palette with wonderous results.

Ask any child with a box of crayons if black and white are colors and they will invariably show you the crayons and wonder how you could be so blind. Physics however says they are not colors because they do not have a specific wavelength; white is all wavelengths and black is the absence of visible light.

Josef Albers felt that the scientific study of color had little practical value for artists because people filter color with their own conscious and subconscious associations. He said “This fact makes colour the most relative medium in art. In order to use colour effectively it is necessary to recognize that colour deceives continually.” He began his renowned study of color theory, how the perception of a color is altered by adjacent color, with black and white.

Students of design still work within Albers’ theories when learning the elements of design, beginning by creating the perfect gray scale. Removing color reduces the subject to its basic elements: contrast, shapes, and relationships. It removes distraction so that we see the skeleton of the work and any deficiencies in the design; strengthen the underlying design, add color back and you have a much more dynamic piece.

Pablo Picasso explored the use of a black and white palette throughout his life, creating extraordinarily complex and powerful works; purging color in order to highlight their formal structure. His most famous painting, Guernica, one of the most powerful antiwar paintings in history, was painted with black, white, and shades of gray. Picasso felt that a picture in colors was to be looked at, that black and white forces us to think. Guernica is intended to make the viewer imagine this terrible incident from the inside using the hidden truth of the psyche.

311 Gallery invited artists from across the country to share their explorations into the world of black and white. Their chosen media include acrylic, charcoal, chalk, clay, digital, etching, graphite, glass, gouache, ink, metals, mixed media, oil, pastel, photography, textile, watercolor, and wax. The works will draw you in and make you think.