Category: ABSTRACTS

A Quiet One

A quiet one.

This one arose because a friend remarked that, for them, as viewed on a Mac Desktop computer screen, all my pics were “too bright”.

So, since I am a “quiet” person, as is that friend, I think, I decided to make a quiet picture!

Did you know that the apparent colours, brightness, saturation etc, of photos or art or anything viewed on a computer etc, depend in part on the settings in the computer itself, or whatever screen you are viewing it on, as well as on the original input (camera, MP3… whatever). The colours you see may not be what the artist intended!

When I look at the photos on Flickr or other photo sites these days, I find that, for me, a lot of them appear extremely over-saturated, particularly photos of greenery such as grass! Is that a fashion now? Have we lost our taste for subtlety, or are my aging eyes somehow out of touch? Or is it just what I mentioned above, a matter of screens. I don’t know.

Perhaps I do like much of my artwork to be fairly brightly coloured because so much news at the moment is dismal. But it might not be quite as “bright” as it appears on your screen!

In any case, this piece is in grateful recognition of all “quiet” people ! And of all friends. It takes all kinds!

Blue Scribble

Blue Scribble

I often find it difficult to pick one title for a picture, or for anything, actually! This one, an abstract, had three potential titles: Ups and Downs, Water Patterns, Dancing Reflections. It ended up as Blue Scribble!

One thing I realised during the B’s Bits Covid project was that everyone reads different things into pictures, poems etc. Sometimes, it is what I had intended but did not mention, and sometimes they are things which I did not see until they were pointed out to me.

Sidetracks

Sidetracks

When I looked up the word sidetracks on Google, I was surprised to find that almost all of the definitions – at least as far as I went – were very negative! I had not thought of it that way when I made this pic, far from it, although I must admit that sometimes getting sidetracked is not a good thing! For me, however, I think of it more as the times when I have discovered something wonderful which I would have missed if I had just kept going on the route on which I started out .

Then I discovered a website called Wordhippo, which I had not encountered before, and my faith in thesaurus-type sites has been restored! Thank you, hippo, for reminding me of all the pleasures that footpaths, back streets, lanes, pathways, trails, wynds and so on have brought me in my life. And, getting sidetracked, I learnt what ginnels, snickets and twittens are!

In remembrance of places which no longer exist

In remembrance of places which no longer exist.

Have you ever gone back, many years later, to visit a building where you once lived, or simply a place which you loved, perhaps as a child or in your travels, only to find it has been demolished and you never knew?

Whenever you thought about it, maybe even decades after you left, it never occurred to you that maybe it no longer existed!

And people…. it’s a bit of a shock sometimes to find out, perhaps from an old friend, that someone you lost touch with over the years, maybe someone you went to school with or worked with, has been dead for many years, but if you thought of them, you imagined them going on just as they were in those days.

Such an experience really brings home the knowledge that the pictures we hold onto, in our minds, of people and places (or events) may be very much our own imagination and not fact!

More about the method in Art Methods, zoom down to this picture.

Abstract. Red.

Abstract. Red.

Here’s an abstract which I originally called “Message”. . . until it dawned on me that people might ask what the message was! And I had no message to share about this one ; it’s just an abstract!

No two people looking at someone or something will be seeing quite the same thing, nor all the history behind the person or object they think they are seeing.

If there is a “message” in this, it is: “As in art, so in life.” We all look at everything through our own personal “filters”: our own darkness, light, sharpness etc, and through our own life histories.

We name what we see, sometimes automatically without thought (red square!). Sometimes our naming is learnt, sometimes we just don’t know what to call that which we see or experience. But every thing and person holds so much more than is obvious at first sight. We know that, but sometimes we forget it.

To find out more about the technique, one of my main methods, and to see what this was made from, go to Art Methods.in the top menu on the Home page and zoom down to this picture.