On Violets and Visual Deconstruction

  This is a painting I completed about three weeks ago. It is entitled "Violet" and I'm sure you can see why. There are certain challenges to painting a piece like this: first, to paint something recognizable as a common flower without painting the flower itself. Secondly, I want to continue to develop the visual style I've been working with for a few years now without looking just like any previous painting.

  Some time ago I started referring, at least in my own head, to this style as "Suggestivism." I wanted to create more than simply an abstract expressionist representation without leaning too far in the other directions of neo-realism or even impressionism. Hence the term "suggestivism," I wish to suggest the idea of an image with which most people will be familiar. Mentally I took stock of the most striking aspects of a violet: the colors obviously, the design of the streaks on the petals pulling together the natural composition of the bloom. I attempted to capture these aspects and lay them out in a way that is new to the viewer, but still recognizable as the subject.

  The second challenge was to further develop a style I keep working with and do something fresh with it. I started with abstract representations of animals (as seen here). I quickly moved on to suggesting the images of trees, other animals, and finally last summer to purely non-objective pieces. I wanted to turn back to actual representation for this one but still change it up a little. I broke apart the visual elements of the violet and made them mostly symmetrical as opposed to the radial symmetry of the flower. The colors I put down piecemeal, more like the illustrations I have been working on rather than a "real painting." Keeping with my watercolor/gouache/ink style I made the streaks wild and all over the place, but still practiced a great deal of control with the straw I use to blow the ink (if you hadn't figured out that's how I do it by now). The end result, if I was successful, is something the viewer instantly sees and says to themselves "Hey, that's a violet!" But nonetheless doesn't really look like one.

First Entry

I have decided to use this website as my new primary method of communication with the world (Twitter insanity excluded). I will post art here, old paintings still available for sale, new ones as I paint them, updates on my book as I finish pages, featured t-shirt designs, recipes, and who knows what else. I'm still setting it up, and there's not much to see right now, but soon there will be, so please come back! So you have something interesting to look at, here is an old painting of mine. The original was sold long ago but prints are still available at the posted link. Enjoy!

"Koi" Print