Circles and squares...

Lately, I've been wondering why I keep painting circles and squares. Circles and squares are not what I aspire to paint. Circles and squares are not what I dream of when I dream about painting. Circles and squares often do not make sense as I compose a piece. And yet... that's what comes out when I don't restrict myself. I've been able to massage them into some interesting images (I think), but I often find myself baffled by the fact that I paint them in the first place. Sometimes, I'm even upset. I want to paint a nude, but out comes a circle instead! I grasp at straws to explain to myself what is going on...

Despite my occasional displeasure, I'm trying to run with it. I'm trying not to fight that which I apparently need to explore artistically. It may not make sense to me all of the time, but I feel that resisting the topic could cause more problems than just going with it. And besides, circles and squares are a fundamental part of composition, generally speaking, so why not paint them? Of course, this begs the question, why not paint triangles, too? I have no answer for that. It just is what it is and triangles are not currently part of the equation, unless we're talking about a triangular relationship between a circle, a square, and a line.

What is interesting about my tendency to paint a lot of circles and squares these days is the fact that they can really turn into anything. They can be part of a pure abstract, a landscape, an abstracted landscape, or even a nude! I'm finding more flexibility at my fingertips than I originally assumed to be available, although I have to push myself to see it sometimes. The best part of this phenomenon can be the tension created between the elements when a circle, a square, and a line are involved (whether in a triangular arrangement or not!); I find myself paying ever increasing attention to this relationship. The placement of these elements becomes no random thing, if I sketch out the design first. There is no mistake in where I am placing the circle with respect to the intersection of two lines. And that, my friends, is where the magic is.

The painting you see in this photo was not intended to be a painting at first. I was just wiping off excess paint when I over-mixed my red-orange (c.p. cadmium orange mixed loosely with primary magenta). I found the square I had painted to be interesting, so I framed it with some graphite from a click pencil. Later, I found myself with some excess 75% phthalo blue + 25% cadmium yellow medium hue, so I purposely painted in the blues (with water) in a manner that was compositionally intriguing. I now want to add some naphthol red (or maybe primary magenta again, although I am gravitating towards the idea of the tension inherent in using naphthol red more than the complementary nature of the primary magenta) in the top right corner, among other things... This piece of Strathmore 400 series mixed media paper (vellum surface) does not have any gesso on it. 11 x 14 inches. And you outta see what's painted on the backside...