Synaesthesia

Sketchbook 1 page 10, 11, 14, 15

 

Very subtle shapes, forms and colours by Georgia O’Keefe. I love the  combination of opposite colours in one painting that work so well together I’m referring to this piece as it is a very positive piece.    

I picked these two watercolour paintings above due to the polar opposites between the two. They both have the same main figure but surrounded by different colours and outlines. The left picture has jagged leaf shapes that makes me feel more uncomfortable than the baby pastel spiral circle in the picture on the right. A deeper meaning to the narrative of the two seems like contraception on the left and the reproduction period on the right.

This relation of form and colour relates a lot to what Max Ernst quotes in Kandinskys “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” book, “Keen colours are well suited by sharp forms (eg. yellow triangle) and soft, deep colours by round forms (a blue circle). But it must be remembered that an unsuitable combination of form and colour is not necessarily discordant, but may, with manipulation, show the way to fresh possibilities.”(Page, 29) “Form can stand alone as an object (either real or otherwise) or as purely abstract limit to a space or a surface.”

   I picked out this picture as it relates a lot to my interest in fruit at the start and the vein in the leave that I repeat with my hand and cast cabbage.

 This is Wassily Kandinskys version of colour distribution, connecting to the mood. I loved his quotes and relations between colours and subjects outside of the realm, “yellow a spreading movement out from the centre, and a noticeable approach to the spectator. The blue, on the other hand, moves in upon itself, like a snail retreating into its shell, and draws away from the spectator.”

Finding a way of expression will be very aggressive and violent at the start of the process due to frustrations in my emotions already that will then dig deeper into emotions beneath those frustrations, and possibly the reasoning.

“Green, Yellow and Blue are potentially active, though temporarily paralysed, in gray there is no possibility of movement, because gray consists of two colours that have no active force, for they stand the one in motionless discord, the other in a motionless negation, even of discord, like an endless wall or a bottomless pit” (Page 37 “The Language of Form and Colour”) I found this quote very interesting as I hope to base my glaze work on grey, due to the green crystals that are revealed in the thick application on ceramic due to the bunsenite in the Nickel oxide.

 

Bibliography

O’keefe, The Artist Collection, Thames & Hudson, 2001, London

The Art & Life of Georgie O’Keefe, Jan Garden Castro, Virago Press, 1986, London

Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Dover Publications, New York, 1977