In my previous post I explained a bit about how I build movement into my painting’s composition. One of the main ways I accomplish this is through various rhythms that I set up in a picture.
When we think of rhythm we think of music. Our ears love rhythm and latch on to interesting rhythms in songs and symphonies but also in raindrops on windshields, heels on hardwood, faulty faucets, and wherever else it can be heard or imagined. Our eyes love rhythm too. They are drawn to repetition and pattern all around us. They find rhythm in the thrum of trees along a highway or the measured beat of a balustrade.
I’d like to highlight three examples of how I bring rhythm into my paintings. These three are also signature elements that make my work instantly identifiable as uniquely mine.
The use of cross hatching in patterned fields as a simple signifier for all fabric.
The stylized representation of hands and feet and the repetition of toes in line.
The use of running script along the sides of the canvas panel that acts as a framing device for the image.
I have illustrated each of these basic uses of rhythm below. Used together with repeating lines, dashes of pure color, stippled brushwork and many other devices, these three examples of rhythm in my work enliven a painting and delight the eye.
Signature cross hatching creates a rhythmic pattern in the painting Francisco.
Repeating imagery sets up a rhythm in the painting Adan y Evas.
Words framing the painting Onotemeras. This script is often from other languages and is used with no punctuation or spaces between words. The text relates to the imagery and adds another layer of meaning. It is not meant to be read as a sign however or “deciphered” in order to understand the meaning of a work.
Okay, actually it’s not static.
Static is the term I use to describe the solidity and sense of timelessness I want to capture in my images. I would like it to seem that my simple archetypes have stood at rest in our memory, still like the imagery of the ancients. The first quality that one notices in my work is the formal and frontal presentation of the figures. I don’t paint action or figures in motion. The subjects are posed and fill the composition completely. Their bodies, limbs, faces fit like puzzle pieces on the canvas. Their gaze passively meets the eye of the viewer. This is stasis.
The dynamism in my painting is found within and in relation to the static impression of the solid figures. Movement comes from the way our eye wanders within the composition.
Bold black lines are like our tour guides as our eye moves over the painted surface. We are led to displays of pattern, light catching texture, sections of precise brushstrokes and contrasting surfaces of sparely painted canvas. We see colors blend, separate and reappear as highlights elsewhere. Lines create repeating shapes and divide the picture on horizontal and vertical axes. Diagonals bring us back to the beginning. What at first seemed static has real energy and, on closer examination, a lot of moving parts!
My aesthetic is static … and it’s not.
Internal movement in the painting Como Los Frutos (Detail). Line, pattern, texture and color.
My painting reflects my fascination and enthusiasm for the human face. Even though I use a simple, stylized formula for the face, I am amazed at how slight variations in the basic forms can evoke various ethnicities. I can broaden or lengthen the rectangle nose. I can slim or make fuller the circle of lips. I can shade raw sienna into burnt sienna or add a red highlight and I have another race, another place!
Originally I set out to paint figures with no racial identity. Just people. Just humans, in order to celebrate all humans. Slowly though, over years of painting, my faces and figures developed beautiful variations and now represent all racial identities rather than no racial identity at all. It’s the same end with different means.
The beauty of universal truths is best pictured using the truth of universal beauty.
Still, like the disconnect some experience with the name Tornillo Fine Art and my name, Pattison, some are taken back when meeting me after seeing my paintings. Looking at a body of work largely representing people of color, most people expect the artist to be a person of color himself. As if any artist would be interested exclusively in painting people from the same genetic makeup as himself! My work is obviously not illustration of my travel or reportage of various cultural milieu. It portrays diverse human experience using reference to other cultures (in composition as well subject matter) but it is not cultural appropriation. It is one person making paintings about all people portraying many kinds of people. Multi-Ethnic.
Iconic. Having the characteristics of an icon.
It seems a little presumptuous to claim my paintings as iconic using a current understanding of the word. Those things that are commonly thought of as iconic are famous, widely known and recognized. They have a quality of excellence that allows them to represent with authority. This understanding is close to the word paragon. A paragon is a perfect example of a particular quality.
I am using the word iconic in a more basic sense. Icons are typically painted representations of Jesus Christ, the Saints or other holy figures. Sometimes the images are carved or created with mosaic tiles, but whatever the material or however they are created, they are thought to contain something of the essence of that which they portray. They are more than representations or symbols. They are understood to be like windows containing qualities of that which is represented and at the same time offering a way to see through to the thing itself.
While I don’t try to paint icons in this traditional sense and don’t claim this kind of spiritual significance for my work, I try to make paintings that represent archetypes, act as windows to those archetypes and perhaps in a small way stand in for them. I am not interested in genre painting or illustrating families, scenes of people working, playing music, praying or meditating. Rather I want to paint Family, Work, Music or Worship. I want a picture of a mother and her children to represent and stand in for Motherhood, not to illustrate a certain mother and her circumstances. I am interested in essences and embodiments.
Look for upcoming posts on my use of style and composition to achieve a sense of the Iconic.