THEMES

There are a number of things I spend a lot of time thinking about but never reflect in any of my work, so I thought I'd try to pull some of those things out in this piece.

Silence
Solitude
Hope and Despair (it's the intersection of both I find intriguing)

MUSIC

The work of Joep Beving, particularly "The Light She Brings". A great example of deliberately playing the space between the music (silence), isolating melody notes and drawing them out (solitude), and alternating between diminished and augmented intervals (hope and despair).

REFERENCES

Besides Kandinsky, I looked at a bunch of minimalist abstract paintings that reflected the themes I mentioned above.

Sophie Pardo:

Grey Haze - image 1 - student project

Grey Haze - image 2 - student project

Rothko:

Grey Haze - image 3 - student project

Couldn't find the source for this one:

Grey Haze - image 4 - student project

Julie Tremblay

Grey Haze - image 5 - student project

MATERIALS

As someone who's more comfortable doing portraits and life drawings in charcoal than handling paint or abstraction, I wanted more control on my brush than I've had in the past with "wetter" paint, so I grabbed some Liquitex Heavy Body acrylics.

Depending on how things go, I might mix in some sumi-e style ink work, to capture a bit of that japanese calligraphic feel in some of the references.

The past few days have been the coldest of the year, which got me thinking a lot about working in grey. I also picked up an aqua green—the blue tones feel very wintery but the green hints at spring, which kind of plays on the whole hope/despair duality.

Grey Haze - image 6 - student project

SKETCHES

Getting a feel for streaks of paint at different levels of dilution

Grey Haze - image 7 - student project

Making marks on paper with paint, pastel and charcoal, trying to mimic my references.

Grey Haze - image 8 - student project

Grey Haze - image 9 - student project

STARTING OUT

Colour experiments—trying to find that hazy grey

Grey Haze - image 10 - student project

Grey Haze - image 11 - student project

FINISHING UP

I attempted two paintings—one with concentric circles and softer edges, and one with a slightly starker stroke.

Grey Haze - image 12 - student project

Grey Haze - image 13 - student project

(PS)

I happened to be at the art gallery the same day I began this project, and stumbled upon a pack of Kandinsky cards which I picked up.

Grey Haze - image 14 - student project

2 Week Modern Art Challenge

Feb 14 - Feb 27

2 Week Modern Art Challenge

Feb 14 - Feb 27