Breakaway

Breakaway   watercolor   19 x 27

This past weekend, my husband and I broke away from our routine to travel to Alexandria, Virginia to watch our son run in The George Washington Parkway 10 K race. Breakaways are important.....as they help you to increase your tunnel vision to take in events and experiences that wouldn't usually come your way. They inspire and they help me to reconsider and reevaluate. I always leave home dragging my feet, however, as my mind and my body prefer to follow the usual path, to stay within the boundaries of "familiar". I witness this phenomenon even in my painting classes, where artists typically sit in the same chair, and observe the class with their comfort zone. We seem to become protective of our space go to great lengths to avoid the uncertain and the unfamiliar. The rewards, however, of breaking away are exponential. Seth had a great race and I was inspired by each of the 7200 runners there who braved the 90-degree heat to prove something to themselves. I am tired this morning but hopeful that some of those visual memories will filter into my subconscious and make my work more human and more genuine. I want to experience something new.

The Power of Negative Space

Breakaway   watercolor   19 x 27

The hardest thing for so many artists, including myself, is the "negative space", that part of the painting that surrounds the thing that we are trying to capture. I have known for a long time that pictures filled with things are a turn-off to me personally. I believe that the power of the picture in total is divided between the things in the picture plane. Therefore, the fewer the things, the more power each possesses. We Americans are full of things....in our homes, in our lives. We are simply losing, in my opinion, the ability to see the power in the negative space.....for me that negative space becomes "what is to be". The L-shaped composition of a sprawling figure on a horizontal picture plane becomes somewhat problematic since there remains a complete rectangle of "nothing".....what is to be. I must admit that I was intimidated by this space, but have become satisfied in the treatment of this space. This painting is of my son....he is a recent college graduate and is weighing all of his options for the future. That unfilled space represents, for me, all that is to come. Very satisfying.