204 Squares on a Paraboloid

  

     This painting was inspired by the work of Ellsworth Kelly.  Kelly drew most of his subject matter from sights that caught his attention during his daily visual experience: plants, architecture, reflections, and especially shadows.  For instance, In his 1951 painting Seine, he used a probability system to recreate the visual phenomenon of reflections on the river.  Kelly also liked to explore colors.  He liked to use colors based off of objects from life as well as his own intuition.  Later in his career, he became obsessed with making shaped canvases with subtle curves.  He also made paintings like Blue Red, 1966 that projected out into the viewer’s space.

     In my painting, 204 Squares on a Paraboloid, I decided to use a specially formed canvas constructed by  Zoe Litaker to react to Kelly’s ideas of curvature and entering the space of the viewer.  Using a graphing calculator, I created a probability system to imitate dappled light on the bricks in the main quad at UNC-Chapel Hill.  In certain areas where the bricks have been replaced many times, there are several different shades and hues of bricks.  The shadows from the trees create even more value differences among these bricks.  I made a system to randomly assign colors to the squares on my painting (similar to the bricks) and then another system to place the shadows (either the lighter or darker mixture of the color).  I used Synchromism color theory to chose hues with much more variety than the bricks in the quad.  I decided to show the process of the work by including all the tape used to make the painting.  I wanted the organic, chaotic bundle of tape to provide a visual contrast to the strict geometry of the canvas.

     In an method comparable to the work of Payce Madden, I simplified a visual experience into a system almost completely unrelated to the actual experience.  I am pleased with the results and I enjoyed learning about Ellsworth Kelly.