Rhythm

The above is my final in a series of  four experimental abstracts so that I could become familiar with painting and adding rice paper collage.  In all four, I was to bridge the sides of the paper with washes of color, allow that to dry and then glue various torn or cut pieces of  rice papers to the surface.  After the rice papers dried, I was to apply more pigment and learn how the different rice papers took the pigment. The goal was to create a painting where the rice papers became a part of the composition.

Each of these four paintings began with little choice about the outcome on the part of the artist. I allowed the washes and paper pieces to show me the way.  With this one, I wanted to get away from all that warm red and yellow energy I had included in the other three. I was searching for something restful. This piece, at first presented itself as a rolling undulating earthform. However, there was a paper I used in the lower righthand corner that presented itself as sharp edged and rather boulder-like. A wave-like form had developed in the upper wash. The land looked soggy and as though it was spilling off the page to the left.  I began to think of rhythm and added the strips of  building-like, ekg-like shapes in the upper left quadrant.  They became dominant and so much like the beat of this rolling landscape.  I was fascinated with the idea that the heartbeat came out looking as though it could double for a large city.  Perhaps this painting raises my own consciousness a bit to understand that we have a role to play in keeping this earth rhythm going.