Recombinant Media and Heat In Winter

Our 21st century challenge is how to combine materials, tools, and other artists to reveal new visions and new forms. With vast access to metals, laminates, fabrics, catalogs of pigments and tools from armies of printers, to libraries of software, to new hand-tools, artists have a superabundance of opportunity. To exploit this expanding mine of materials, tools, and sources artists must share their process and their discoveries. From entrepreneurs to scientists we are often reticent to share. We want the payday and fame for ourselves. This constrains the path of discovery.

Recombining media and using a theme packed with contradiction like, “Finding Heat in Winter” I turned to a collaborative painting made by Max Dunlop and me (example 1). I superimposed one of Max’s photos on the image (Example 2). Next, this combined painting and photo was elongated and glued to a sheet of aluminum (example 3). While generating the combined photo and painting I intensified the warm tones. In the final step, the combined image was re-covered in a bath of warm dark paint.  After brush, finger and squeegee manipulations you can see the result in example 4.

Example 1. Collaborative Painting,48×48, on anodized aluminum.

Example 2. Painting with superimposed Railyard photo.

Example 3. New elongated version glued to aluminum,18×18.

Example 4. Repainted (Recombinant) image,18×18.

We always look for a single category to place a percept, Man or Woman, Big or Small, Black or White. Ambiguity allows us to flip between categorizations but, we  only hold one percept at a time even if we flip quickly. When I combined a black and white marsh photo with a color  photo of  pond ripples I created a new singular if confusing image (example 5). This combination image was glued to a surface of another painting with portions of that painting still revealed.  I applied more paint to the entire surface and found a new image, warm and cool (example 6). Example 6 relies on the unifying effects of atmospheric perspective.

Example 5. Combination photo.

Example 6. Photos and Paintings combined.

Continuing to turn up the heat on winter meant pushing the complementary color harmony of oranges, reds and blues.  While in New Orleans this January I found the sculpture garden attached to the New Orleans Museum of Art. The Garden held a meandering pond whose surface reflections offered  contrasting color harmonies of heat amidst cool.  I pushed the colors with software then, pushed them further with paint. Here are two examples of the floating cohabitation of hot and cool, dark and light  (examples 5 and 6).  Both are on white enameled anodized aluminum.

Example 5. Cold and hot reflections I.

Example 6. Cold and hot reflections II.

I leave you now with a simpler effort. Paint on white enameled anodized aluminum. Here is winter generated with reds, oranges, pinks and ultramarine blue.

Example 7. Step one, warm lay-in.

Example 8. Step two, Warm Winter Fog.

I invite you to my lecture, “Cameras, Computers and Paint”, a history of our evolution through pictures and technology this coming Sunday, January 31 at 4:30 at The Silvermine Art Center in New Canaan, Ct. Contact Silvermineart.org or call 203 966 6668 ext.2 for more information.