Make It Feel Fast, Make It Feel Slow

Paintings like songs can slow time or speed it up. The viewer can read a painting like a poem, chasing the rapid urgency of a rhythm or in contrast, languidly reflecting upon a mist of ambiguity.  Paintings evoke a sense of time like music, just as  tight focus, sharp  up-tempos, and bright notes suggest a fast musical experience or,  a  sluggish tempo, in a minor key  with soft and darker notes suggests a more pensive and slower experience. Subject matter, color choices, modifications to linear and aerial perspective, the beholder’s point of view and  blurred edges can all contribute a sense of the high speed or slow pace in a painting.

Let’s begin with the fast painting. Example 1 uses a cityscape because, we are familiar with a hurried experience with this subject.  The beholder’s could be traveling by car, especially since I placed the beholder in the center of the street.  Cities are organized more geometrically than forests or lakes. Single or two point perspectives are well suited to recreating an urban illusion.  I Selected a single vanishing point and direct the parallel geometry of the street, buildings, traffic and overpass directly toward it.  The shared vanishing point uninterrupted by a set of curves and turns delivers the viewer speedily to infinity. The beholder can find this rapid experience of the single point perspective to be too quick and therefore,  might exit the painting unless another directed experience presents itself to divert and sustain their attention.  You see in both of my City paintings (see example 2) I offer two destinations as a way of sustaining the viewer’s attention.  Now, the beholder can experience speed without quickly wanting to exit the painting.  Choices always slow down our attention.  A choice of two decisions are pondered. One does not.

example 1. City, Decision, oil on pvc panel,48×48 

example 2. City, Fast On Broadway, oil on pvc panel, 48×48 

Both examples also use high value contrasts, bright complementary color contrasts, an application of aerial perspective (applied atmosphere),  sharp verticals contrasting against the horizon and ground plane, and an abundance of hard edges to reinforce a sense of speed.

In contrast, example 3 demonstrates a meandering soft-focus, dark shape slowly and loosely wending its way across the pond’s surface toward a diffuse and luminous background. There is no central vanishing point. The color harmony is analogous  ( blues and greens) . The equiluminance of the background coloring creates a field of close light values with blurring edges. The components of  background are not easily  situated in the visual cortex which creates an uncertainty and slows the beholder’s participation in the painting. Equiluminance thwarts our effort to locate objects within areas.  The subject is timeless and appears to be experienced from a static point of view. The components of the picture  appear to be  capable of  only subtle motion. There is light and temperature but, little to no breeze.

example 3. Randall’s Pond Variations, oil on brushed silver anodized aluminum,48×48