I visit this just about every time I go to the Auckland Art Gallery. It never ceases to amaze me how a series of white (or sepia) lines on a heavily abstracted landscape can capture Christ’s journey to the cross so well and be so moving. Like most great paintings, though, you have to spend time with it for it to take effect.
Tag: Painting
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A gem from Jill Carver
Generally speaking [for a strong painting], you really only need three or four values. Sometimes you need five, depending on the environment. But that is enough. And then… you let hue do the rest of the work.
Jill Carver on The Plein Air Podcast
Not that this sounds easy to pull off!
She also recommended doing notans, which I’m sure would help a lot with the first part of this equation. I think I’m going to buy some brush pens and do some of those.
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Keep the light alive
If the dream to be an artist is in you too and you feel haven’t reached it yet – even perhaps that you never will – I want to encourage you to keep that light alive within you. Nurture it however you can, whenever you can, even when it feels hopeless.
Paul Foxton in his post “Lambent Rose, the limitations of paint, and the endless search”
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Really look at it
The next time you look at art, really look at it. Spend time in front of it. How do you really respond? Not to the name and its reputation, or lack of it, but to the work itself.
Ian Roberts, Creative Authenticity
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When McCahon declared, ‘I will need words,’ in a 1961 letter to poet John Caselberg, he was saying he needed them for something. He wanted his paintings to speak: to cut through, to communicate, to be clear in a new way about human fears and hopes and about how to love authentically. And he saw that painted words were a way to approach spiritual realities and urgencies that resisted conventional picturing.
Justin Paton, McCahon Country
