Patterns, exagerated lines
Through the Trees by Kent Crawford
I photographed a creek running through the trees on the edge of a cut block. When I painted “Through the Trees”, I exaggerated the lines of the photograph to create angular patterns. Those repeating patterns help give the hillside a sense of steepness and movement.
January 28, 2014
The lines form a repeating pattern of triangles.
Cut Block no. 2 by Kent Crawford
The cut block is an industrial pattern. These paintings show my tree planting work sites. I planted this cut block above Henderson Lake, Vancouver Island, in 1989. It is also an opening or a clearcut. To some it is an eyesore.
Cut Block No.1 by Kent Crawford
We also planted planted forestry blocks that were burned in the Canal Flats Fire. The Canadian photographer, Loraine Gilbert was on that crew. She photographed the landscape near our camp at 27k on the White Swan Main.
Loraine Gilbert's photograph of the Canal Flats Fire
January 22, 2014
Loraine Gilbert's photograph of the Canal Flats Fire
Tangled Garden by J.E.H. MacDonald
When I saw the mountains behind the thimble berries and fireweed that became the subject of my painting Thimble Berries, I remembered the Canadian post impressionist, J.E.H. MacDonald‘s wall of blue purple behind his garden. I don’t think you can say there was a particular colour or colour combination that post impressionists used. They took the Impressionists vivid colours and exaggerated them. They shared the idea that colour could have a meaning of its own or your own. I like the idea that colour has it’s own life and you respond to it.
Thimble Berries by Kent Crawford
These are the colours for Thimble Berries
January 20, 2014
The apple Picker by Helen McNicoll / Alders by Kent Crawford
When I saw the alder trees screen the light above Kennedy Lake I remembered the colour relationships of Helen McNicholl‘s painting, “The Apple Gatherer” c.1911. She placed high key cool colours on top of dulled yellows to describe the colours of the tree leaves in the shadows. This relationship is called discord. I use this colour pattern in my screenprint, “Alders”.
"Alders" colour register and diagram
The center of interest in “The Apple Picker” is the picker dressed in white. Purple is added to white in its shadows to compliment the yellow. A colour against its opposite hue makes the colour pop out. The white of the “Alders” sun is not pure, but has a few drops of purple in it.
January 20, 2014
There is a repeating pattern that forms along the edges and intersections of colors and shapes and lines that is a reflectaphor.
A reflectaphor is any creative device (including literature, such as metaphor, simile, pun, paradox or synecdoche) that relies for its effect on creating in the mind of its audience an unresolved tension between the differences and similarities of its terms. In other words, a reflectaphor excites a state of intense wondering, doubt and uncertainty- a sense of nuance. The repeated colour shapes in my brush marks pull out the reflectaphoric qualities of fractals. Fractals are figures that recur at progressively smaller scales, each part has the same characteristics as the whole. Fractals suggest both order and chaos.
Parts of that pattern combine with other similar but different parts to make a bigger similar pattern. It recurs in variations, providing a sense of unity and wholeness. Hokusai uses this pattern in the woodcut Waterfall at Yoshitsune.
West Lake 2 by Kent Crawford
I use this repeating pattern in the painting West Lake 2.
January 19, 2014