Okay, you've been warned. Expect no direct routes in this Gemini's forward movement. Instead, there might be byways, detours, aimless rambles, and an occasional lift-off by hot air balloon (a Gemini device if ever there was one). Buckle up as we travel the winding path that brought us to my latest painting.
Several years back, JT was immersed in a physics textbook. "Hmmm. This is interesting," he said. "Um?" said I, not expecting it to be. "Yes, the Red Shift phenomenon." Colours!!! Maybe this IS interesting?! He explained that "the red shift" has to do with changes in wave frequency -- in sound waves, it's what produces the wonky variation in, say, the sound of an ambulance siren moving away from you. "And there's a Blue Shift, too." Fascinated? Read more here. But I had all I needed: "Red Shift, Blue Shift" -- the title for a future painting in which, well, reds would shift to blues and vice versa.
Fast forward now, via hot air balloon, to early 2016 when I was drawn to a breathtaking exhibit at Vancouver's Italian Cultural Centre -- artist Lilian Broca's "Judith Mosaics."
These astonishing mosaics of glass tile are tremendous -- over six feet high, four feet wide. As you'll see on her website (there's lots to explore there), they're conceived as if they were huge pages from a sketchbook. Against the vibrant colour of the central scene, neutral toned tiles have been arranged to suggest the artist's drawing that has not yet been "filled in" -- a work in progress. Some even recreate along the edge, in tile, the spiral binding of an artist's notebook.
Six months ago, when I received a greeting card with one of the images from a former colleague who works at Il Centro, I fell in love again with the rich varied colours and the imaginative treatment of the preliminary lines on the "sketchbook page."
Now, I don't remember how I made the leap -- but the prospect of a painting called "Red Shift, Blue Shift" came back to me. All I needed was a set-up --
-- and a quick 5" x 8" study
...and I was off:
EXCEPT:-- I'd planned to begin with a painted underlayer for the "grout" and immediately (belatedly!) realized this would alter any colour laid on top of it. Forget that.
Also, I'd started out thinking like a tile maker/supplier. Tiles would come in small squares and certainly not be curved. I quickly abandoned that idea and was soon supplying myself with "tiles" that were rectangular, diagonal, rhomboid.... "We can supply all your customer needs."
I was almost a third of the way along when I really began to understand how the shape of the tiles and the line of the grout could contribute to the movement and "readability" of the design.
Although I'd set out to learn from Lilian Broca about her choice and placement of colours, in the end I probably learned more about laying tiles. Consider this: The finished painting measures about 14" x 20," and each square inch contains on average 12 tiles. Each tile had to be painted at least twice to achieve full colour. That makes 640 brush strokes -- minimum!!! (But still: How many tiles would go into each of the Judith panels?)
Here's the grand finale, in all its splits and shifts. (To see its progression, click here)
Breathtaking!
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