Abstract Art

New Paintings on Website

Whenever I finish a group of paintings, I post them to my art website.  It always feels good, after working so hard, to make this presentation of the whole group.  It's akin to putting together an exhibition in a gallery, except that it's an online presentation only. 

Here's one of my new paintings, Always Forward:

Some of the others have already appeared in this blog space.  I often show them as I am working on them. 

Whenever I post new art to my website, it means I also rearrange the other art, eliminating some pieces and moving others around.  A website is an online gallery, and how you arrange the art matters.  The paintings shown at the beginning of a web page will be looked at more than the others.  And a painting may look better or worse depending on its placement on the page and what other works surround it. 

I have a tendency to show a lot of my art on the website.  I don't know if that excites visitors or exhausts them.  Typically people either love what they see and stay awhile, or leave quickly.  I've arranged things so that a viewer can move from painting to painting easily without going back to the main pages of the site.  But some visitors choose to go from gallery page to gallery page and select the individual works they want to see.

It's pretty amazing, actually, that art can now be viewed in this fashion.  We can share our work and enjoy the work of other artists from around the world while sipping tea in front of our computers.

Green as a Theme

It is interesting how we are influenced, even in non-representational abstract art, by the events going on around us.  With the effects of global warming and impending devastation to our planet, thinking "green" has been swirling around my unconsious as well as my conscious thoughts.

I don't usually choose colors for their symbolic or thematic impact, yet the intensity and quantity of  green in some of my paintings lately seems to me to be significant.  Of course green had many connotations of life, vegetation, and the "natural" world long before the green political movement began.  Green has always been prominent in my work.  Perhaps now I am simply more consciously aware of its significance. 

Three green paintings currently on my art website are Green Is Good, The Importance of Being Green, and Seeing You This Way:

A green-themed painting I just finished is "Green Here and There: "

In the first three paintings, green overwhelms the canvas.  In the last, its effect is more subtle, but still dominates. 

Noticing what I've done with green makes me want to explore this theme further.  We'll see.  I don't usually start with a plan of action. 

 

Emerging into Color

I was painting in more muted tones this winter, perhaps in response to an urge to hibernate.  The ground has been covered with snow and the weather unremittantly cold.  One day this week the schools were closed because of the high winds and below zero wind-chill factor.  Snow blown across the roads created a white fog that was impossible to see through in places. 

My response to winter hasn't always been to paint in muted, darker colors.  One winter I created a series of "white" paintings, in which I began with a lot of white paint, adding other tints to shape it.  Two of my favorites were Don't Let It Get Away From You and Through A Glass Brightly.

Recently I've been moving into more color, getting in the mood for Spring:

  Agrarian Compass

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