STUDIO DIARY
Oct 23, 2012
Three-Figure Study using Collage
Collage based on Guilty Parties.
Guilty Parties, Oil on Canvas, 2012
Jun 7, 2012
Painted from observation, this still life mixes multiple perspectives to create a disoriented yet coherent space. I painted the objects from eye level, while the table's surface is viewed from above. I make the changes based on the needs of the painting's internal composition. As the composition becomes clearer, the painting drifts further and further from any objective truth about the still life I'm observing.
Refers to the excerpt on memory I posted on May 24th from Brain Rules "...present knowledge can bleed into past memories and become intertwined with them as if they were encountered together." And so on and so on.
May 27, 2012
Sun is out!
Two small plein-air paintings on cardboard. I did these last week on a rare 80-degree May day in Seattle. They were part of a lesson I created for a friend, using a limited palette with two hues (yellow ochre - warm, torrit grey - cool) and white.
May 24, 2012
An Approximate View of Reality
"In an attempt to fill in missing gaps, the brain is forced to rely on partial fragments, inferences, outright guesswork, and often (most disturbingly) other memories not related to the actual event. It is truly reconstructive in nature, much like a detective with a slippery imagination. This is all in the service of creating a coherent story...
"The brain constantly recieves new inputs and needs to store some of them in the same head already occupied by previous experiences. It makes sense of its world by trying to connect new information to previously encountered information, which means that new information routinely resculpts previously existing representations and sends the recreated whole back for new storage. What does this mean? Merely that present knowledge can bleed into past memories and become intertwined with them as if they were encountered together." (p. 129-30)
From Brain Rules by John Medina
NOTES FOR PAINTINGS: Paint observations from disconnected times and places into a singular work more deliberately rather than incidentally. These disjunctions don't necessarily need to be image-based, perhaps? Emphasize tension between conflicting perspectives within a painting/place. Also play with tension between working from observation (present) and imagination (memory) within the same painting.
May 12, 2012