Light as expansion

Light As Expansion

Still pretty busy, but I did manage to finish up the fifth in my series of the 22 Dimensions of Light—it's the fifth dimension!—Light As Expansion. Expansion, the opposite of contraction, the energy to grow larger, to increase, to be in that phase of creation where the focus is on adding, extending, becoming more of what you already are.

The weather is warming up, and I'm starting to really look forward to getting out into my garden to paint again, but first I have to get out into my garden to work—and there's plenty to do right now. Fortunately we're looking at a week of dry weather with nice temperatures, so maybe the next time it gets warm, I can drag the painting stuff out and start playing again. Meanwhile, I've amassed a huge backlog of great photos of local scenery, so when I'm done with my current projects and can start painting again, I've got plenty of material to work with.

Anyway, back to work. Thanks for looking!

The Elmore Leonard approach to painting

Late Afternoon Light, Mid-December

Last year I got a truly essential book for any fiction writer: Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing. Today while I was trying to finish this painting, this book came into my head and stayed there for quite a while. The wording of the rules doesn't really fit painting, but the point of them certainly does: Get rid of anything and everything that comes between the painting and the viewer.

In other words, anything the viewer notices, instead of seeing the whole painting, detracts from the viewer's experience of the painting.

One of Leonard's statements in the book, although it's not one of the rules, sums up his approach: "If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it." I kept thinking about how much I'm trying to get better with my brush, to learn to make beautiful brushstrokes. I reworded the rule to fit: If it looks like painting, repaint it. It should look like the subject, or the reason you chose to paint this subject—not like painting.

Another one of his rules kept recurring to me: "Keep your exclamation marks under control." I figure a detail is just like an exclamation point; it begs for the viewer's attention. I want just enough detail to suck the viewer into the scene as if it were his own memory, his own imagination creating the colors and shapes of the image. You need something sharp and clear for the viewer's eye to lock onto, but it doesn't need to be much.

I was very tempted to paint more detail in the tall firs behind the deciduous trees in the front, but then I remembered, they're not the subject; the subject is the brilliant sunset light of early winter reflecting off the branches of the trees in front. I was out with a friend visiting local wineries the week before Christmas, and we were driving home just as the sun was ready to set. The light came through a gap in the clouds and lit up a bank of deciduous trees and their thousands of tiny branches, all bare now. I yelled "Kodak! Kodak!" and she quickly pulled to the side of the road and I jumped out with my camera. The light lasted for a few more minutes and I couldn't believe our luck.

Of course if you are a master of brushstrokes, like Joan Mitchell or Emily Carr, or a master of detail like Salvador Dali or Norman Rockwell, these rules don't apply. Sadly, I'm not a master of anything, but happily, I know that already.

Light as motion

I've been painting more this month than any month I can remember. I finished the fourth in my series of the twenty-two dimensions of light. I'm really happy with the amount of energy in this one. I've never done anything with all hot colors before, either.

I've also been working on several smaller paintings and finished two on paper, including one of a PJM rhododendron blooming last spring, down by my barn. PJM's are a family of rhododendron varieties recognizeable by their lavender to pink to white medium-sized flowers and being just about the first ones to bloom. The ones down at the college started blooming this year at the end of January, which was extremely early. Mine will be opening in a couple weeks, from the look of them.

Another one is another attempt to capture the first light of a December morning, coming through the tall firs behind my house.

The Nature of Light

One of the reasons I'm enjoying this series is because I really do enjoy working with light. Painting certainly wouldn't be very interesting without it, and I really don't think we'd have a universe without it. It's certainly difficult to imagine any existence without a force as fundamental as light is to our existence. I've finished two more paintings in the series. The second painting is called Light as Force. It feels like strength, or power.

The third painting is Light as Creation. It could be a pool of water, or a mitochondria, or the genesis of an idea.

Twenty-two dimensions of Light

I've started a new series of mixed media abstracts. It's an attempt to show twenty-two dimensions of the fundamental energy of the universe—Light. I finished Radiance last month, and I'm working on the second one now. I'm not sure how far I'll get; twenty-two is a large number, but I have come up with twenty-five possible descriptors. The mathematics of the cosmos has always intrigued me, even though I never got past beginning calculus, and it's been a real treat to see how far astrophysics has come during my lifetime. If I had done better in school, I would have loved to be in on that work. At my age, I figure if I can even contemplate the existence of twenty-two different dimensions, that'll be an excellent workout for my brain...which needs all the exercise it can get.

I've spent the last two rain-free spells re-photographing all the large works I have on hand with my new, better camera, and this weekend I finished getting those images up on my new gallery at Fine Art America, an on-demand reproduction and printing house. All of those paintings are now available for purchase as reproductions in a wide range of sizes from greeting cards to 30"x40", on half a dozen different surfaces from paper to metal. As far as general quality of artwork at FAA, it's the most impressive online gallery I've seen; in just a few hours of poking around I've found several artists whose work is astonishingly beautiful and original. My gallery is at:

 https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/2-patricia-ryan.html

I'm also happy to now have good images of some of my favorite paintings from years past.