Early Abstract Paintings
Well my abstract paintings seemed to go over well today in our critique in class. We had a mini assignment in class before the critique where we had to try to analyze one of the pieces in a group. My analyticamorphasis abstraction was selected by one of the groups to analyze. The group of females thought that said painting was about the creation of the earth from the sun, or the dawn of the universe, creating order out of chaos. There was also stuff about it being female “fluids” interacting with the male fluids.
I was a bit surprised, as of the two abstracts, that was the least sexual in my mind. (My original concept for the piece, as I transmogrified my guitar hero controller into abstraction, was to represent the struggle in art that I have when I create–specifically, the left side of my brain versus the right side. The left was represented by black ink strokes of various sizes against the plain gessoed canvas, while the right was a yellow “blob” with blue and orange dissolving into the yellow body. (Thereby also representing the orange, yellow, blue, green, and red buttons on the controller.) I like their description–it wasn’t my vision for the piece, but certainly ideas along those lines passed through my head at various times as I created it, as it does have an aura of “order out of chaos” to it.
My process painting (an abstract painting using non-conventional paint delivery method) consisted of me filling condoms up with latex house paint, then pricking holes in the reservoir to create drip paintings. I got really lucky with my random selection of paints–the 4 colors I ended up using each had widely varying viscosity, and one of them even drained away, creating some really interesting depth to the piece. Pollock may have denied the accident, but I cherish chance. Unfortunately it’s probably going to look like crap when photographed–the depth will probably be gone. I wish I had come up with a good reason for the color scheme on it, but I just randomly selected paints.
As for the official logic for this creation? I had the idea of using paint in balloons, but not having any lying around, I went for the closest thing I had in my room–condoms. I then remembered a line Pollock retorted (from a clip of Pollock the movie we saw in Art Appreciation II). When he was asked how he knew he was done with a painting, Pollock responded, “How do you know when you’re finished making love?” I had my justification, aside from the whole drip painting being a metaphor for male ejaculation. (My joking justification in my own mind was that it was a metaphor to the first time I copulated–I was nervous, didn’t really know what I was doing, lasted about an hour, I gained a little confidence as I went on but realistically anything good I did was by accident, and it finished off with a bang.)