Between The Leaves

In Patterns of Intention, Michael Baxandall wrote,  since the early Renaissance artists like Pieter Camper noticed that blue areas and objects appear farther away and,  red objects appear closer to us. He therefore assigned blue to the background and red to the foreground.  Da Vinci did the same.

Chardin, the great French still life painter of the 18^th century  experimented with this phenomena more freely.  Because we see red objects as closer and blue objects as further back he could put a blue object in front of a red one and cause the blue to appear even larger than the red one. He found he could manipulate the expansion or compression of space through red and blue as Renaissance artists had begun to do.

Later in the 19^th century Impressionists would exploit the space-making ability of complementary colors. By the 1880s American Impressionists like John Singer Sargent followed  French artists’ examples using both value contrasts and color contrasts combined with loose bravura brushwork.

Sargent found intimate flora filled settings were ripe for complementary color contrast spatial distortions. In 1886 his contrasts were less color than value driven  as you see in example 1.  This image subliminally influenced me later when I painted example 2, “Indications of May”.  I had forgotten about Sargent’s painting but,  recognized their similarities when I later rediscovered it.

Example 1. Sargent’s oil study of roses.

Example 2. “Indications of May”.

Both paintings were set against a distant blue sky and relied upon the red/pink flowers and redness of trees to bring the foreground closer. Sargent tried the red/green,  dark/light contrast for spatial construction in example 3, “pomegranites” of 1908. Here there was no reference to blue sky, only the blue-green of  leaves contrasting against reds and yellows of the pomegranites.

I wondered how much closer could red/yellow in high contrast with blue feel. The result is “Dissolving Sunlight” an oil on anodized aluminum seen example 4.

Example 3, Sargent’s Pomegranites.

Example 4. My roses in “Dissolving Sunlight”.

A few days later I walked along the same stretch of Chestnut Hill Road and discovered blooming dogwoods. I had not been thinking  about Sargent’s  flowering trees but, I was later reminded of them.  See example 5, Sargent’s watercolor sketch of  Magnolias in 1912.

Example 5. Sargent’s “Magnolias”.

I carry a more conscious memory of Sargent’s  1908 watercolor, “Gourds” (example 6).  I painted example 7, “Dogwood Skies” maybe because I have enjoyed Sargent’s suspended leaves and gourds overhead  showing only small patches of sky .

Example 6.Sargent Watercolor “Gourds”.

Example 7. “Dogwood  Skies”.

I took a variety of dogwood sky photos.  I cropped them, reversed them, and, exaggerated colors and edges.  These next examples begin with a photo I snapped of  dogwood flora against the sky (example 8).  Remember, I have no interest in copying this scene only in letting it serve as a point of departure for my later discoveries in paint.

Example 8. Photo as snapped.

Example 9 illustrates step two’s initial lay-in of blue and yellow with the cropped altered photo alongside. Observe I work from the general to the specific . Specifics come later. I find a feeling of space and design first.

Example 9. Step two.

Example 10. Step three.

For a view of the image to date I refer you back to example 7. Notice how the reds snap forward of the blue background.

Example 7, reprised.

I invite you to the opening of an exhibition of my works  this Friday, May 13,2016 at Susan Powell Fine Art in Madison, Ct.   The reception runs from 5 to 8 PM. The Gallery phone: 203 318 0616.  I will have works from my city images to nature.