... And Still More Experimentation

 After finishing up my last post about the Undertakers II painting, I discovered another interesting artist.  I listen to three different podcasts where artists are interviewed, and one of them talked with Jennifer Anderson.  Her approach sounded remarkably like what I try to do, so I looked up her work.  And it was a "wow".  Very strong technically, compositionally, and emotionally.  She was doing in oil paint something very similar to what I had been doing in charcoal and pastel over the past few years, and what I had tried and failed to do in oil.  These are single figures or faces that carry so much of the sitter's character.  Here's a sample, titled Fragile: 

Here we have a single figure, extremely well painted.  The chair she's sitting on has been reduced to just a few lines, and her environment has been reduced to a barely-modulated flat surface.  This helps focus attention on the figure.  The background has a very slight gradation, enough to tell you that it wasn't ignored.  And the figure has been pushed over to one side.  The fact that it runs off the canvas to the top, left, and bottom results in those edges being fully engaged in the composition.  The large flat gray space to the right becomes important in its own right, and there is a strong diagonal running from upper right to lower left that gives it a dynamic tension.  All together, this composition speaks to me of the young woman's inner thoughts: probably not idyllic, somewhat unsettled, but being seriously considered.

 Here's a comparable piece of my charcoal/pastel series, Astrid #1:

 

This was done in one of our weekly life sessions.  Single female figure, flat background, deliberately not "finished".  It has some of the same characteristics of Jennifer's work, but not all.  The figure is pushed to the side to create some room in front of her face, but not to the extent of Jennifer's work.  In most of my artworks in this series, though, the figure is centered on the page.  I discovered that this positioning doesn't really engage the rest of the surrounding space.  It's just ... space.  In Astrid #1, the empty space is more important conceptually.  It's not something I ever thought about, it just was.  Now I know to think about it.  Another issue is that the background here is flat and untouched.  In many works in the series, it comes across as unfinished or unaddressed.  This was something I wrestled with and never really came to a satisfactory conclusion.

So after looking at Anne Magill's work (see my last post) and Jennifer Anderson's figures, I tried some lessons learned in new paintings.  My intentions: simplify, engage the whole space, simplify, single figure, pay attention to edges, some areas developed while others are flat, and simplify.  Here's the first effort, Natalie:

And the second, Emma: 

So ... success?  I think I'm onto something that I can really sink my teeth into.  What do you think?