abstract design

[cobalt fingers]

This painting was inspired purely by design. This house with attached barn struck me as pure, raw design. I made the door red and cleaned up some distractions, but really the subject was very nice as found. It's in Bethal, Maine,

[cobalt fingers]

this is 8x10 oil-the image is bad, sorry-some details are lost.

[henrik]

Yes, that is very nice. Could you elaborate on your thought process here as you composed this?

[cobalt fingers]

One of the things I spent some time with was how the design fit into the format. I didn't want lines going into the corners for example. I drew the whole painting out in a cartoon (paper drawing to size) so I could check and correct the vanishing points and move windows and lines here and there to hopefully improve the design. I wanted the red door to be the focal point. It was really just grey. I thought along time about shapes or rather felt about shapes. I work to defeat redundancies of shapes or annoying, boring areas. I wanted this white house in shadow to be as rich in color as I could make it. The sky as the light source was very intense lemon yellow. All other colors were muted at least slightly.

[henrik]

Thank you Tim. I think this is really brilliant, and as you say there is no redundancy. Cover up one of the shapes and something is lost.

[cobalt fingers]

I think that's a good catch-good point...essential elements Sargents' Boit Daughters has that...

remove one and it falls apart.