Accidental paintings

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Recent reflection photos sent from Amelia (not here) reminded me of my subway photos from a couple years ago. Diffuse, obscure, enigmatic? Or maybe just indecisive and ambiguous... In any case, I had three of these printed out big on canvas (VERY expensive) and am experimentally painting on them - trying to add some solidity to rest the eyes on. So far it's going badly and I'm making some expensive screw-ups.

1 comment:

LaurieFebruary 2, 2009 at 4:29 AM
I love the third one and the last one. I hope those are the ones you printed. I like the complexity in layers of these photographs.
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With my own paintings (emmaeyre.com), I'm most interested in texture, color, illusion/anti-illusionism, and other formal elements. I've found that some of the most exciting texture, color, and illusions can be found around, outside and in, made by human and natural accident. I started documenting these "pieces" in 2008; they are lovely things made by weather, mold, frost, remnants of graffiti artists, government workers (painting over graffiti), snow, mud, rust, wear and tear. Once I started seeing the paintings, they were everywhere -- so in order not to spend all my time taking pictures, I have some loose rules, all of which may be broken any time I wish:

1. Except in special circumstances, the paintings/subjects should be two-dimentional. If something is just too exciting to pass up, then the finished photo counts as being two-dimentional (what I'm trying to do here is document existing "art" rather than creating art with my photographs. I have too much respect for real photographers -- folks who have learned a bit more about the craft than turning on a camera and using a flash or not -- to front).
2. The paintings should be accidental -- graffiti can be a part of the composition, but the idea is not to be documenting street art.
3. Abstraction is fine. Beautiful effects are ok (color combinations of paint peeling, rust, etc.), if a little boring. The prize is in finding a painting like the one above -- my favorite so far -- that is entirely accidental and representational.
4. All criteria can be abandoned whenever I like.

Accidental paintings

Thursday, January 29, 2009

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