Brian, that is a fitting observation…everyone should do that. When I go to an art museum I stand in the middle of a gallery room and look first at the paintings from there. That lets me see the whole compositions with the primary and secondary focal points--perspective, the color composition, etc.
Colors and the shapes of colors are placed so that your eye will blend them together to create images: people or landscapes. The purest example of this is Seurat’s “Pointillism.” But artists have been using the basic technique for hundreds of years.
It’s the same with music, right? You don’t hear the individual notes—they blend together. There is a constructed composition. But you can isolate certain sections if you want to listen closely to how the composer strung it all together.
Same with painting. After I take it all in, I’ll move up closer—zoom in, so to speak—and stand where the painter stood and look at it through his or her eyes. I try to think what they were thinking as they put down each stroke. Time stands still, and maybe it goes back to when the painter faced the blank canvas. That’s the point I am trying to make in this post—Time is more than something that a clock keeps track of.
Also, it can move back and forth through all existence and maybe we can tap into a time pulse.
Amazing how, when I zoom in some of the paintings make no sense - but zoomed out it all makes sense. Is this a metaphor for life sometimes?
Thanks for great writing and art as always.
- b
Brian, that is a fitting observation…everyone should do that. When I go to an art museum I stand in the middle of a gallery room and look first at the paintings from there. That lets me see the whole compositions with the primary and secondary focal points--perspective, the color composition, etc.
Colors and the shapes of colors are placed so that your eye will blend them together to create images: people or landscapes. The purest example of this is Seurat’s “Pointillism.” But artists have been using the basic technique for hundreds of years.
It’s the same with music, right? You don’t hear the individual notes—they blend together. There is a constructed composition. But you can isolate certain sections if you want to listen closely to how the composer strung it all together.
Same with painting. After I take it all in, I’ll move up closer—zoom in, so to speak—and stand where the painter stood and look at it through his or her eyes. I try to think what they were thinking as they put down each stroke. Time stands still, and maybe it goes back to when the painter faced the blank canvas. That’s the point I am trying to make in this post—Time is more than something that a clock keeps track of.
Also, it can move back and forth through all existence and maybe we can tap into a time pulse.
stunning picks!