Abstraction and the search of self

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 I've been obsessively watching Ian Roberts' composition lectures and videos on YouTube. It's remarkable that the first time I came across him about 3 or so years ago, I watched a DVD from the library on "Mastering Composition." In it, he talked about the movement of the viewer's eye as it enters a painting, and how contrasts draw the eye around the art. It happens in such a fraction of a second that we don't know what our eye is doing. Yet, he claims, if you understand what the eye is drawn to, you can manipulate the path of that eye by creating contrasts and shapes where you want the eye to be pulled. I was fascinated - but I didn't understand a thing. About six months later, I checked out the DVD again, and watched it again. I could kind of see what he was on about - but I wasn't mature enough as an artist to feel like I had that kind of control. I was barely able to manage the medium! 

Now, three years later, I came across his YouTube videos (weekly, on Tuesdays), and I am blown away. I understand everything he is saying and can't get enough! Though he is an oil painter, he does little graphite value studies, talks about color temperature, hue, value, and intensity (a foreign language to me until I heard him and saw his work) - all common terms to most mediums. He talks about other theoretical and philosophical things - like abstraction and beauty - and inspired by him, I feel like I am ready to take some risks. I am drawn to such different kinds of watercolor styles that, first, I need to decide what style I want to paint in. Ian has something to say about that too - that you can't find your style; you already have it. Perhaps that is true. I don't know. I have also been fascinated lately with color and colorists and color schemes. Ian talks about a design-based composition vs. a subject-based composition. I get it. I am always drawn to the design-based. I realized that I don't want to be an impressionist which is all I have done so far. I want to be an expressionist, maybe a Fauvist, use color boldly, play with color schemes, yet be within the representational realm, abstracted, but have the subject be recognizable. And I want to leave whites and paint negatively because I am drawn to that too. I am, in essence, searching for myself. For the artist I want to be.

Here is a composition fresh off the easel (err...lap) - design-based, using a color scheme, and yet with a strong value-pattern and sense of shape. I am excited to explore more! Essentially, I am trying to please myself. What do I like? What do I respond to? That's the direction I want to go in.

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