Exploring Abstract Art — As Connection to Mother Nature
As I sipped tea and started my day, I reread my small pocket guide art book about Georgia O’Keefe. It referenced her early work exploring abstract shapes experienced living in West Texas. This time in her career she was an art teacher and was exploring aspects of artistic expression herself. Georgia O’Keefe was highly influenced by Arthur Dove.
I’ve never really studied him before so delved in with some online research. And here I find an artist approaching what I feel and creating in a way that feels familiar. I think I’m getting closer to finding that which in me feels a need to be expressed. (A favorite painting made yesterday, prior to learning of Dove, cropped but shared 3rd from left in gallery above.)
On The Met’s website the curator explores the painting “Storm Clouds” | 1935 (Gallery above - far left). “As its title suggests, this work portrays a stormy landscape, but one dramatically abstracted into a series of arched and rolling bands of color surrounding a large eyelike shape. Dove’s colors are the muted shades of earth and overcast sky, with the silvery, metallic sheen of the artist-made frame echoing and enhancing the grays of the composition. Like many avant-garde artists, Dove experimented with abstraction as a way to pursue an inner vision: he simplified his subjects to their most basic, organic forms, expressing a spiritual force, beyond their tangible reality.”
This morning Joel and I took a walk through an arroyo that abuts our property, gathering photos and samples along the way. (Far right photo above, a few examples found.) Then went exploring deeper into the wilderness next door, down a favorite path that winds along an arm, looking down into an ancient Precambrian V-shaped valley. We picked up rocks, sticks, flowers and photographed interesting cactus, trees and shadows. The purpose: to return home with compelling samples of beauty to be incorporated into abstract explorations. Part of my explorations yesterday involved applying colored pastel chalk on top of a layer of watercolors. Today, revisiting the Book of Earth by Heidi Gustafson, I think I understand why - these chalks feel very earthy as this photo shows - a sandy desert-like affect, the product of rock itself.
”I would like to make something that is real in itself that does not remind anyone of any other things, and that does not have to be explained, like the letter A, for instance.” - Arthur Dove. The creative exploration continues. And our new Polaroid is charging - will be part of the journey capturing desert grandeur as well.
