
Oil on panel
12″ x 10″
© 2015 Marilyn Fenn
I do love this painting, and I have enjoyed creating this series. After these first four, however, my interests took a turn, which you will see in the coming days (if you stay tuned).
Abstract Paintings and Musings on Art
I do love this painting, and I have enjoyed creating this series. After these first four, however, my interests took a turn, which you will see in the coming days (if you stay tuned).
Oil on panel
12″ x 10″
© 2015 Marilyn Fenn
I may—or may not—work on this one some more, but I haven’t yet (and it’s been about 3 months), so this may be done.
Oil on panel
12″ x 10″
© 2015 Marilyn Fenn
Oil on Canvas
12″ x 10″
© 2015 Marilyn Fenn
Here is one of my first paintings of this year. Doing a lot of experimenting–trying different things. Some are working out great; some not so much. I am happy with this painting, though I’ve since started heading in another direction (or 10). I’ve done about four paintings like this so far. More to come tomorrow.
About Jackie Tileson’s Work
I could fall into one of Jackie Tileson’s paintings and wander around for hours or days. She creates a deep ethereal space filled with wonderful surprises of different types of imagery: explosions of paint, drips, amorphous shapes, graffiti, circles, loops, and fractal imagery — different vocabularies of expression skillfully combined in one large space.
I just discovered she’d had a show in Dallas this past summer. An 8-hour round-trip and I could have seen her work in person!
Artist Statement (excerpt)
“I am interested in creating paintings that bring together a wide multiplicity of sources into a coherent – and sometimes discordant – whole, an attempt at a “unified field theory” of painting. My paintings feed off of the history of abstraction, physics, traditional eastern imagery, Chinese landscape motifs, digital imaging, and other sources. There is a constant flux between atmospheric and graphic, abstract, and figurative, quiet and chaotic forces. A medley of sources is orchestrated to create or reconstruct a world within the painting in which a new kind of sense is made – one in which the beautiful, absurd, sacred, and mundane can coexist.”
See more of Jackie Tileson’s amazing paintings, and read her full statement and reviews on her website.
This painting started out very differently than it ended up. In a month full of daily interruptions (far more than the usual tolerable level of daily interruptions), I had a hard time keeping the same frame of mind while I worked sporadically on this canvas.
I actually began with a painting I had started a while back, based on a microscopic image of spider eggs, but I now wanted to get away from even this little bit of representation and move to pure abstraction. I painted out the eggs by turning them into ovals, but as I worked on making compositional sense out of what remained, I ended up painting out most of the ovals, and then eventually, removed all of them.
I will say that in the animated gif below, I was initially quite happy with the painting as it was happening in frames 3-5 (with the peachy-colored tree-like shape on the left, and the rosy gourd-shape on the right). But in the process of trying to resolve the composition with that gourd-like shape, I eventually decided the shape was too disruptive to the wholeness of the painting and painted it out. The swirl that attached itself to the gourd-like shape remained, however.
I wish I had documented all the stages this painting went through as it evolved, but sadly, I did not, so we are left with only seven of the stages from the beginning to the end of the process. See the abbreviated evolution in the gif below:
Once I finally decided the painting’s composition was finally working and was done, I realized it could be viewed as satisfactorily from at least two orientations, if not all four! (I do tend to turn the canvas and paint from several sides as I work on a painting). When I posted the studio shot of this on my G+ page and asked my followers for their opinions on which orientation they preferred, I got several responses preferring 3 of the 4 possible orientations.
See what you think:
I’m including some of the comments I received from my followers on G+, so you can see just how confusing it can be to ask for this kind of help. 🙂 Here are the responses to the question “which of these 4 orientations do you like best” (and why):
Original Orientation:
Personally, I like the original orientation and the 90 degrees right ones the best (see them again below), but I still can’t decide which way to hang it. Here’s why:
Either way, one part — either the wobbly bits or the luscious colored space behind the wobbly bits — seems to be more dominant than the other. I guess I’ll leave it to the viewer to decide.
So, should you choose to purchase this painting, it will be your choice which direction it should hang. 🙂 It can be purchased from my online shop.
If you’re interested, you can read the initial Google+ post and comments here.
I was working on this painting when my husband broke his leg (badly!). Even before his accident, this painting was giving me fits. I abandoned my original idea soon after starting work on it, then decided my next idea wasn’t big enough to fill this rather bigger canvas (24″ x 36″); then I tried at least half a dozen other ideas before discovering I needed to finish the painting more or less the way I’d started it — my second idea after all!
So I am done and happy with it, finally!
This is another work that started out quite differently than it ended up. It was filled from corner to corner with ovals to start with, but then I kept taking out more and more stuff. I’m much happier with it now. 🙂
I think this is the favorite of my recent paintings. I’d love to paint this loose all the time — or looser even. I don’t know why it doesn’t always seem possible. Constitutionally predisposed to tightness, I fear…
This painting is sort of an experiment in soft and broken colors, and I do love the palette. I hope to do more in soft tones like this in the future.