For those of you who have known me and my art for awhile, or have looked at the history of my work, you will have seen a trend away from photorealism and detail across the entire painting to a more expressive and focussed appraoch. I attribute this to a number of things, none of which can be attributed to failing eyesite! LOL.
One is that I have learned a lot about animals over the course of my life, and I no longer need to learn about them through painting every hair. The spirit of the subject must prevail, as well as the entire composition being more than the sum of its individaully detailed parts. Another is the fact that photography is an art form unto itself - why paint something like a photograph when you can just take a photograph of it?! I also love impressionist and plein air (on location) landscapes, the approach to which I have been applying to my wildlife pieces, with details only in the center of interest - just as the human eye actually sees.
The "Essences" series is a distillation of the above approach. It takes a subject and strips it to the barest of what contstitutes it. I am having fun with "testing" it on my children, who must correctly identify the animal before I call it a successful "essence"! When I am ready to post it on my website, www.keena.ca, I will provide a key so you can see if you "got it right".
Say, what do you think of these for tattoos? Logos? Let me know what you think.
Yours in art,
Keena
1 comment:
Hi Keena, Wow really neat!
reminded me of musical notes.
One of my early teachers used to say,"even if you can't paint that
day do some thing for yourself and
it will remind you that you are an artist"
Post these on wetcanvas!
Frank
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