Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Art Discovery

Google Images Introduces:

a new-to-me painter, Hans Hartung. I used a search string something like "scribbles" or "abstract drawing" (can't remember exactly) and discovered works by this early 20th century European abstract painter in the hits window. If I have seen these images before in art books years ago, they escaped my notice. 



Reeds, hair and grasses, life forms found everywhere in nature, most often noticed by photographers such as Harry Callahan and Eliot Porter. Sometimes labeled a calligraphic style built on processions of lines, repeating lines with leaning and curling, bundling into components related to the mass; linear forms similar to the warp and woof woven patterns I hear in compositions by Philip Glass and Arvo Part.

I think my use of lines in images I nevertheless call "paintings" participates in this formal tradition. I have just finished a new painting built up on linear forms exposed by winter's annual dessication -- my subject was a marshy area in the pastures of Round Valley last winter.