Thursday, January 28, 2010

Pretty Fog


Today I am excited! I'm writing a proposal for an emerging artist grant and my project just keeps getting better and better. Since my style is usually uber-vivid, I'm painting a fog series that will challenge me to tone down my color-play. I may have just one or two color pops instead of having the entire canvas filled with exuberance. I'll create patterns of light and dark- -based on tree forms, and then impose color schemes that I find in other artist's work or even in interior-decorating magazines. I'm playing with color-- subtle color shifts, how colors look different depending on their proximity to other colors-- that sort of thing. It's very Albers, but not nearly as abstract.


The foggy landscape intrinsically carries more emotion. Think of all the fog connotations and words that come to mind when you see a foggy scene. Heavy, dense, blanket, lifting, softened, airy, hopeful, muddled. The words are full of contradiction, but they can all be associated with fog. Thanks to my good friend, Hollis, I have a new idea of how to incorporate text into upcoming exhibitions. There may even be a little fog-poetry happening.


This January I've felt a little foggy in the head-- and no, it's not from too much champagne at New Year's! As an artist, you're so open to new ideas and moving in any direction that it's often hard to pick a direction to move toward. Now I've found it-- and it's FOGGY...


Fog


The fog comes

on little cat feet.


It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.


--Carl Sandburg


No comments: