Digital Fantasies with Lights and Orbs

Blue Dream

Circular Reverie

Fractious Orbs

Gray on Gray

With the chaos of construction going on around me, and my attempts to help my husband and also hold down the fort in other ways, I find I'm having little time to blog and even less time for art. I'm looking forward to August when we might be past this phase. Maybe at that point I'll have more time for my interests, and hubby will get to take a break. I hope to be painting by August or September, as well.

Here are some digital pieces I created wholly in Photoshop, using a variety of filters. The one at the top is the fourth in this series, and "Gray on Gray," which you see at the bottom, is the first image I created. Essentially, all four are derived from the same basic image. I could keep on going with multiple variations and probably will. But for the purpose of this post I thought it would be a good idea to show you just four images in progression, all with the same composition as a source.

One cannot help but be fascinated by the infinite possibilities and flexibility of digital art. Painting in real time involves a variety of media and leaves the tracks of the artist's hand. Digital art may lack that dimension of sensuousness and physicality, yet it has its own options that one could not so readily achieve, with brush and pigment.

Which of these images do you like the best, if any? Your feedback is important to me.

Please visit http://www.lyndalehmann.com if you would like to see more of my art or the links to my other sites. All images and text c Lynda Lehmann.

"Colliding Orbs," My New Abstract Expressionist Painting

This is my latest acrylic painting. It's 24 x 36 inches, and titled "Colliding Orbs." I was going to call it "A Stitch in Time" because it reminded me of agitated clocks and a vision of time run amuck, which might have been a more fitting title when considering the chaos in our world. What do you think?

When I paint, I'm after the physical, kinesthetic experience of moving around a surface and applying pigment to it, and watching what evolves. It's like a mad dance or ritual color-celebration, in which I pursue a new visual experience. I'm not trying to replicate anything from our everyday world, but rather, to immerse myself in a novel sensory experience that will yield an equally unpredictable product with its own life and totality. It's this evolving and dynamic process of finding color, composition, and form in new arrangements, that gives me excitement and makes my days interesting.

Wikipedia defines Abstract Expressionism as:

Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and also the one that put New York City at the center of the art world, a role formerly filled by Paris. Although the term "abstract expressionism" was first applied to American art in 1946 by the art critic Robert Coates, it had been first used in Germany in 1919 in the magazine Der Sturm, regarding German Expressionism. In the USA, Alfred Barr was the first to use this term in 1929 in relation to works by Wassily Kandinsky.[1]

Technically, an important predecessor is surrealism, with its emphasis on spontaneous, automatic or subconscious creation. Jackson Pollock's dripping paint onto a canvas laid on the floor is a technique that has its roots in the work of Max Ernst. Another important early manifestation of what came to be abstract expressionism is the work of American Northwest artist Mark Tobey, especially his "white writing" canvases, which, though generally not large in scale, anticipate the "all over" look of Pollock's drip paintings.

The movement's name is derived from the combination of the emotional intensity and self-denial of the German Expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools such as Futurism, the Bauhaus and Synthetic Cubism. Additionally, it has an image of being rebellious, anarchic, highly idiosyncratic and, some feel, rather nihilistic.[2] In practice, the term is applied to any number of artists working (mostly) in New York who had quite different styles, and even applied to work which is not especially abstract nor expressionist. Pollock's energetic "action paintings", with their "busy" feel are different, both technically and aesthetically, to the violent and grotesque Women series of Willem de Kooning (which are figurative paintings) and to the rectangles of color in Mark Rothko's Color Field paintings (which is not what would usually be called expressionist and which Rothko denied was abstract), yet all three are classified as abstract expressionists.

Abstract expressionism has many stylistic similarities to the Russian artists of the early twentieth century such as Wassily Kandinsky. Although it is true that spontaneity or the impression of spontaneity characterized many of the abstract expressionists works, most of these paintings involved careful planning, especially since their large size demanded it. With artists like Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Emma Kunz, and later on Rothko, Barnett Newman and Agnes Martin, abstract art clearly implied expression of ideas concerning the spiritual, the unconscious and the mind.[3]

I'm one of those people who finds fascination in the spiritual and subconscious aspects of art-making. I paint for the love of it, and I try to leave the critical adult behind me in favor of joy. For me, the joy of painting evokes the childhood happiness of free expression, exploration, and spontaneity. It provides the stimulation and excitement of a unique experience. In this case, THE VISUAL EXPERIENCE. I have capitalized this phrase because it so succinctly defines my goal and describes the gratification I feel in the process of putting pigment on canvas.

How do you feel about Abstract Expressionism or about abstract art in general? Does it excite your eye and resonate for you? Who are your favorite artists, abstract or otherwise?

Detail of "Colliding Orbs - Image c Lynda Lehmann

Image and text c Lynda Lehmann. If you would like to view more of my art or make a purchase, please visit Lynda Lehmann Painting and Photography or my gallery at Imagekind, where you can choose from several sizes and paper types or buy my prints plain or matted and framed. >