Change is constant

-


"The only constant in life is change." - Heraclitus

I was able to keep up the daily painting habit - and posting on Instagram - through our four days in New York recently. I couldn't do plein air as the rest of the family was with me [and would have gone on their phones - a pet peeve], and I would have felt the pressure of finishing, as if there aren't other kinds of pressures already.
This quote about life applies to many different things: feelings and emotions which come and go, and if you pay attention, you will be aware of how fleeting they are - in type, in intensity. Maybe you might feel sad for a long time and think it isn't changing, but the intensity is fluctuating constantly. It IS changing. It applies to sensations in the body, as I learned during Vipassana, and the key is to observe the changing sensations and acknowledge that they are changing - old ones are going, and new ones are coming - constantly. Of course, the body sensations are what give rise to feelings and emotions, not the other way around as we normally believe.
In a very roundabout way, what I am trying to say is that a constant change in a watercolor painting is important to keep the eye moving to the next area of interest. Large fields of no change - like a perfectly laid down constant wash - is boring. Changes of color, value, even texture as I am beginning to understand (watermarks - such an exciting new world I am exploring right now), speckles, drips, muddles - are all so exciting to the eye.
Here is the first painting I did in New York - from a picture I took from the taxi that was taking us to our hotel. My little travel kit was a success - compact and very portable, with 2 brushes and a pencil neatly rolled up in an erstwhile bamboo sushi-making mat.


"Reflections in New York" - March 30, 2019

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Connected shadows

-
Image
I have often passed by the Campbell Community Center/Heritage Theater and been struck by the beautiful Spanish Colonial Revival architecture with intricate ornamentation. Finally, I had the opportunity to paint it today with the SCVWS Thursday plein air group. I think I should have used a ruler for this as some of my verticals aren't parallel to the edge of the paper! I do like the purple/blue shadows and how the colored shadows blend into one another around all the bright white areas. As always, for me, greens are troublesome - they often look overworked in my paintings. But, I am pleased with this overall.                       “One Ticket, Please”
Read more

Faith vs. belief, and inspiration

-
Image
In yesterday's Gita session, we discussed the difference between belief and faith. I found myself saying that a belief was hard-edged and inflexible, and faith all-encompassing and flexible and always positive - akin to having a big-picture trust in the cosmos. When I heard myself say "hard-edged," it made me realize how many terms and ideas are so interchangeable between the world of watercolor (art) and spirituality (life). When edges are hard, the eye stops at each edge before it goes to the next "item." It's like stop-and-go traffic. You are making progress but it is not smooth, not a flow. When edges are soft, your eyes travel easily, from one object to the next because the divisions between the objects are blurred, and the values do the talking. It is like life, like consciousness. We are all one - not so hard-edged and separate - yet we don't know it, and bump up against one another because of our hard edges, fixed ideas and notions, prejudices an...
Read more

Design- vs. content-driven

-
Image
I've found that strong design-driven art is more attractive to me than content-driven paintings. Of course, the content or subject is there (unless it is truly non-representational work), but it is realized and recognized a split second after one has responded to the design. For this reason, subjects that lend themselves to being more easily abstracted - interiors, close-ups of anything, still life cropped just so - are more appealing than standard impressionistic distant landscapes where the shapes themselves tell you sky-earth-mountains-lake. A landscape can also be abstracted but I feel there is more effort in hiding or veiling landscape features for the slow reveal to happen. I've been working on this still life, and just starting with a notan helped me understand and crop shapes right away. Pushing some of the lighter shapes to the white of the paper helps with abstraction. Like a chess board where each shape is bordered by a contrasting value shape, or the way we typicall...
Read more