First paintings from photo/painting collage

This abstract, "North Albany number 1" is suggestive of the landscape's vitality as I experience it. To show the energy, I am selective, keeping what is most expressive. The details of form are secondary and lost while the color is about my internal emotion accented with pulsating lines of contrasting color. The abstract is a visual poem. My process was to trick myself into developing a departure from what I have been painting. In the previous post, there is a photograph of this painting as it developed on the floor of my studio. Next to the painting was my reference material from the field. The collaged accordion book had photos -both mine taken of North Albany and some free photos by Martha Marshall.
This first painting went very well. The second and third are still incomplete after two days. At the end of the second day I started a new accordion book painting shapes from more photos of Martha Marshall. Her Tennessee landscape is somewhat like North Albany but just enough different to really get my senses sharpened to seeing my own backyard. My own living space had become so familiar that I was blinded by the everydayness of it.



Then I took photographs of my neighbors Angus.

Checking on Martha Marshall's blog with more inspirational free photos I noticed that I was always looking south from my house and studio. I was taken by the importance of walking all around to find shapes that will resonate with my feelings. I need to look at how lighting effects the rhythms of man made architecture, the animal, and the plants of my world.