UNDERSTANDING ABSTRACT ART #13

Title “Desert Places” (Acrylic) 120x90cm

ABOUT THIS PAINTING:

I thought I would continue the theme of deserts. This week is another painting on that subject. This painting (#13) and painting (#12) from last week were both featured in a 3 minute video about my painting process. The title of the video is “Tanmayo – Abstract Artist” and it is produced by a good friend of mine Natalija Brunovs (Video Producer). You can view it her or on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ2MzRmoKBA

The video shows how I use a process of elimination to arrive at a finished work. In it I talk also about how my art making process is closely aligned with the way I lead my life – that I respond to what life presents in the Now and am not “attached” to what went before. My painting process is therefore a parallel to my personal approach to living. “Desert Places grew out of an earlier painting from The Goddess Series (see Understanding Art #9). The earlier painting was called “Hestia – Goddess of Spirituality and the Hearth”. So I re-cycled an older painting (see here in Figures 1,2,&3).

I will discuss the older work at another time, but you can see that there are a few elements from the “Hestia” painting that still remain in “Desert Places”. (Subjects 1,2,&3 above “Desert Places” show you, the reader, the way this painting progressed This is a bit like life where traces of the past continue into the present.

Artistic techniques used in the painting:

The title comes from Robyn Davidson’s book “Desert Places” which I read around the time of painting. However the painting is not about the book but deals with my own personal journey in life.

I have always liked the warm soft colours of the desert. I also like the landscape and open spaces found in deserts. This painting is a celebration of having cleansed one’s self of unnecessary emotional “baggage” and seeing things from a different perspective. A desert is not devoid of life – in fact if you look closely it teams with life and when the rains come there is an explosion of abundance. The orange and blue are colours that are complimentary opposites. The painting shows water, sky and earth. The composition is balanced because of the horizontal blue “sky” and the “waterhole” at the bottom. The other “waterholes” are remnants of the past painting – which showed “the hearth” which is associated with the Goddess Hestia. Don’t you think it looks like a desert place?