• I hope you will check out our Academy Memberships! For a monthly or a yearly payment, you can take one course after another, or even two at a time, without spending another dime, AND on your own time schedule. Recently, I discovered in our archives from seven years ago a post worth brushing off and revisiting. Let's do that! What do these two images have in common? Answer: They signify the artist's dilemma. One problem in painting is balancing that expressive side with the structural side of what's happening in the art work. - The
structural side includes two major skills: managing tools and materials, and controlling the composing part. Those require thought, repetitive practice, and learning.
- The expressive side includes being free of outer constraints so that we create from our inner voice.
The tightrope is balancing those two without tipping towards one or the other. A few years back, one of my painting sessions began when I was drawn to a bright blast of light radiating from a tree on the edge of the riverbank. (At the time, I was reading for the third time Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkein.) As the
painting progressed, Tolkein words describing Lothlorien kept floating in and out of my awareness. This kind of experience is the part of the expressive side of creating visual art, when something resonates so strongly that it hangs around in our heads while the work is evolving, whether or not we're actually working on the piece. Dianne Mize "Thoughts of Lothlorien" Oil on Canvas My concern was finding the right degree of brightness (structural) within the light without blinding the viewer. I wanted to make it just bright enough in the right places to convey the experience (expressive) of it.
The tightrope walk was not to make that light appear concocted, but to keep it expressive. Not to think and control, but to just respond with the brush and paint. It's very much like when composing music, getting
the right volume without blowing out everybody's eardrums, or while writing a poem, choosing words strong enough without screaming. And that brings me back to the tightrope walker and the painter. When we take ourselves through focused exercises designed to inform our decision making skills--exercises for their own sake, not attempts to make paintings--we train our eyes, our brains and our bodies so that while expressing
ourselves, we make the sound decisions automatically. That's the tightrope walked with pleasure and joy. Enjoy a balanced, expressive weekend! During my Language of Painting series, I explained the role of our visual elements. If you'd like to review those roles to better understand the behavior of elements, here are the links to each of those
discussions: Color --Value -- Shape -- Texture -- Size -- Line and Direction
You can access the archive of all my newsletters (as well as the Quick Tips and other stuff) at any time by going HERE.
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