Monday, May 27, 2013

Poppies at la Madelene


Poppies at la Madelene
 oil on board  6" x 8"

"Art is an experience, not an object."
Robert Motherwell

The experience of making a painting can result in both the most basic and the most complex form of communication. Basic because it is simply a pleasing arrangement of colored marks on a flat surface - complex because it can evoke memory of place, time, space, form, and atmosphere. The nature of how this comes about is wrapped up in choices made at the outset based on what might be called the artist's 'expressive intent' - the poetry of the moment, the space, the light. The expressive intent is then tempered by the exploration of the motif and the evolving process of putting the paint on the panel - allowing new discoveries to influence the arc of the experience. In the end, the final work should be joyful evidence of what it meant to be alive in that moment, in that place, thereby allowing the viewer to enter in and experience the same.



2 comments:

  1. Love this one, Dean. It takes me right back to le Madelene and our fun time there. It's pouring here in Boston at the moment. I hope our compadres in the second class are having a good time. Looking forward to seeing you later this summer.

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  2. Thanks Bobbi, Paula and I need to decide when we're going up to Maine as figured against our son getting down to his first apartment and school etc. May not be till September but thats a good time to go anyway.

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