“Seashell Burst” and Other Archetypal Forms

I call this image "Shell Burst" because it reminds me of the proverbial "Sunburst."  The sun has been a metaphor on numerous levels for the human species since the beginning of time, so it seems to follow that any image resembling a sunburst might conjure subconscious archetypes.  This closeup of a gorgeous fluted conch in relation to an adjacent shell makes a meditative still life that to me, is a tribute to nature's gorgeous diversity.
I am impressed by the delicate ridges of shell that encircle the center, and I'm reminded of the repeating, self-mirroring forms in nature that are expressed in the mathematical algorithms of fractals as well as in so many natural forms.  The self-replicating forms of ferns and other plants are perfect examples of the impressive genetic codes that determine each species of life on earth, and the same majestic display of order within diversity goes on at the highest heights of mountains as well as in the depths of the oceans that comprise our globe.
What are some of your favorite examples of repeating forms?


Note: You can click on each photo to see a larger version. All images and text on this blog are copyrighted material, and may be used only with written permission, except where syndication rights have been granted. All other rights reserved. Please visit my sites listed in my sidebar if you would like to see my paintings and more of my photography and digital art, or make a purchase.

A Balanced Form of Self-Love

The Eloquence of Dreaming - Mixed Media - Image c Lynda Lehmann

Producing art gives us power. I see it as a power over ourselves, over our energy, perception, motivational systems. And perhaps most important, I view it as a supplanting of our need to achieve a social equilibrium (which in my mind is never really possible anyway), by a need to achieve harmony with ourselves in relation to the universe. 
The truth wear six billion faces, and each has different life circumstances, a different life script, if you will, and a different mode of being. For me, doing art takes me to a place from which I can accept all scripts and embrace the subjective and relative nature of truth. Because my own script is to me so engaging, at times enthralling, and always varied and full of mystery, it teaches me both tolerance and hope. It gives me confidence in the infinite potential of the universe, for hope, harmony, and healing. In short, it gives me joy. 
 I've heard it said that artists, in doing art, are participating in a God-like Creation process, and indeed it is true. While we are by no means transmuted into gods by the creative process, we at least become His humble hand-maidens. We see glimpses of beauty and wonder in places where other people may fail to look, unearthing it at every turn. We see new relationships, both visual and metaphoric, sociological and scientific. And this is our reward for moving away from the more petty power struggles that so often escalate into real and dangerous conflicts around the globe. 
I've heard it said, also, that we artists make art in order to find love and to be loved. I think the apex of this is that in the tender connections we make to the universe, we find some degree of self-love. I think this is a balanced form of self-love that perceives the relative and tenuous nature of things, including the subjective nature of our own lives. Therefore, in my opinion, it is a mature self-love, not to be confused with narcissism.

Note: You can click on each photo to see a larger version. All images and text on this blog are copyrighted material, and may be used only with written permission, except where syndication rights have been granted. All other rights reserved. Please visit my sites listed in my sidebar if you would like to see my paintings and more of my photography and digital art, or make a purchase.

Bark Abstraction: Art on Trees

Barkreation - Image c Lynda Lehmann

The rough and irregular bark of a Southern Pine resembles shingles or a jigsaw puzzle and creates a lively abstract pattern.  I find exquisite beauty in the articulated and varied surfaces of tree bark. Nature moves us in unexpected but exhilarating ways.



Note: You can click on each photo to see a larger version. All images and text on this blog are copyrighted material, and may be used only with written permission, except where syndication rights have been granted. All other rights reserved. Please visit my sites listed in my sidebar if you would like to see my paintings and more of my photography and digital art, or make a purchase.

Ecstasy at Twilight

Ecstasy at Twilight  - Image c Lynda Lehmann 

Sometimes the sunset is so complex, poignant, and compelling to look at that it has the power to move us like a love poem or a wonderful new song.  I have long been fascinated by the fact that each sunset is different and although I have borne witness to hundreds if not a thousand of them, they never cease to captivate me. Each one feels like a rebirth or an epiphany, making me aware of the mystery and complexity of life and our universe. 

Note: You can click on each photo to see a larger version. All images and text on this blog are copyrighted material, and may be used only with written permission, except where syndication rights have been granted. All other rights reserved. Please visit my sites listed in my sidebar if you would like to see my paintings and more of my photography and digital art, or make a purchase.

Beauty in Demise: An Example of Paradox and Dichotomy

Beauty in Demise - Photo c Lynda Lehmannn 2014

This is a studio setup inspired by some beautiful, lush branches of an orange tree that a good friend brought me to photograph.  I did a series while the leaves were still lush green, with bright, juicy oranges and delicate white blossoms attached.  
A week later, when the leaves had dried out and withered, I was stricken by the beauty/ugliness dichotomy and how the simple curling of individual leaves conjures "life" as a whole as well as some possible bird or animal forms.  I then contemplate "the wholeness of things," as I like to call it, when one example or kind of form evokes another, at another level of being.  From atoms to cells to tissues, organs, and organisms, similarities abound on a grand scale.  From the micro level to the vast universe, underlying principles that can't be articulated but only vaguely perceived, bind the cosmos into that elegant "Oneness" that scientists and quantum physicists refer to. 
If you would like to read a book that explores formal and functional similarities in biology and the greater universe as well, and will pique your sense of wonder, you might want to try The Lives of a Cell, by Lewis Thomas, M.D.  It's a fascinating read that affirms Dr. Thomas' subtitle: Notes of a Biology Watcher.  And it will give you prickles of what C.S. Lewis calls the feeling of "the numinous," that exhilarating and just slightly eerie feeling of awe and wonder that informs your spirit and lets you know that you in your humble human capacity, can still perceive great and mysterious things that are beyond our full apprehension.
I tried to arrange these leaves to get the most pleasing negative space, because I have always enjoyed negative space as well as the forms contained within.  As my painting style has most often been frenetic, full of furiously looming form and texture, working with photography to achieve a more minimal composition is a welcome move in another direction.  Have you done any minimal drawings or photos or penned a "minimal" poem lately?

Note: You can click on each photo to see a larger version. All images and text on this blog are copyrighted material, and may be used only with written permission, except where syndication rights have been granted. All other rights reserved. Please visit my sites listed in my sidebar if you would like to see my paintings and more of my photography and digital art, or make a purchase.

Butterfly Blossoms in Magenta Colorful Abstract Art Throw Pillows

Unfortunately, I've been absent from blogging for a long time.  And I do miss sharing experiences and perspectives with my blogging friends!
Life has a way of throwing us curves, but it's a good thing to return to our (neglected) passions.  I've been busy working on my stores at Zazzle, when I have a little time to myself.  Here are some new products in one of my favorite designs.  I hope you love color as much as I do!

 

Butterfly Blossoms in Magenta Throw Pillows by WaterSky
Check out more Jazzy Pillows at Zazzle

 

Butterfly Blossoms in Magenta Laptop Computer Sleeves by WaterSky
View more laptop computer sleeve.

 

Butterfly Blossoms in Magenta Messenger Bags by WaterSky
View more commuter bags.

 

Butterfly Blossoms in Magenta Business Card Template by WaterSky
See more Jazzy Business Cards

Note: You can click on each photo to see a larger version. All images and text on this blog are copyrighted material, and may be used only with written permission, except where syndication rights have been granted. All other rights reserved. Please visit my sites listed in my sidebar if you would like to see my paintings and more of my photography and digital art, or make a purchase.

Today's Thought On Art: Elements of The Visual Language

Untitled Gray - c Lynda Lehmann

I believe the "logic" of abstract art is purely an internal logic: a logic of the visual language. Some or many elements compete for various positions in the totality of the piece, and those elements can be compared to the elements of spoken language.  Some areas are dominant, like the subject of a sentence.  Some carry the "action," as a verb does.  Other areas of the composition are transitional and create linkage between one area and another, kind of like a preposition.  
This is just my own perception. But in my thinking, I have run into this metaphor again and again.  And I'm fascinated by the language comparison: in this case, with the analogous visual parts making up the analogous (visual) "whole."
Lynda Lehmann c 2013


Note: You can click on each photo to see a larger version. All images and text on this blog are copyrighted material, and may be used only with written permission, except where syndication rights have been granted. All other rights reserved. Please visit my sites listed in my sidebar if you would like to see my paintings and more of my photography and digital art, or make a purchase.

Today's Thought On Art: The "Logic" of Abstraction

Frantic Rooster c Lynda Lehmann 2013 - Acrylic on Canvas 

I believe there IS a logic in building the visual experience we refer to as "abstract art."  What is missing is a logical referent to any specific and time-bound element or phase of "reality."  For this reason, abstract art owns a freedom and flux unattainable in obedience to realism.    
Lynda Lehmann c 2013 
Note: You can click on each photo to see a larger version. All images and text on this blog are copyrighted material, and may be used only with written permission, except where syndication rights have been granted. All other rights reserved. Please visit my sites listed in my sidebar if you would like to see my paintings and more of my photography and digital art, or make a purchase.

A Novice Desert Mystic

Mystical Light - Lynda Lehmann c 2013

I dance in a translucent dream -- a dream of light and verdure.  Drenched in crystalline sunshine, under high fair-weather clouds that cast their shadows like afterthoughts on distant peaks, I feel the land rolling away from me while it percolates with waves of new life: blossoming and blooming and pouring forth all manner of feathery green after a three-day rain.
I have wandered some Northeast forests and always felt I'd seen plenty of what Beauty there is to behold. But the desert's blazing shades of emerald, amber and gold against distant hills flushed red and glistening in the morning sun, make me ecstatic. Rocky flanks rise under luminescent violet puffs that float above -- coasting, those magnificent clouds that look like great arcs sailing the deep skies -- and I know that I'm in a place that changes me.  The epic fullness of stretching, yawning magnificence in diamond-faceted splendor that unwinds within my view, seems impossible. 
Pointed skeletons of trees and ancient pocked Saguaro Queens, scroungy tufts of yellowed brush and telltale signs of nocturnal burrowing creatures: all cast their net of Intrigue to make me feel spellbound.  I am a novice desert Mystic: I have no need to brush aside the Inklings that make me feel buoyant as those sailing clouds.  I am buoyant with joy at the grandeur of Being.
How can I be so fortunate as to feel I've seen Eden?  The scent, the verdure, the great flowing open space unspoiled by the clatter of urban sprawl, wash my soul.  I stand mesmerized.  And I am content and far more whole than I was yesterday.
All the while, the desert whispers its sacred covenant:  Thou shalt not gain dominion, nor command me. 
And the Garden still grows.

Sea of Beauty - Lynda Lehmann c 2013

Golden Light at Evening-Lynda Lehmann c 2013

Desert Covenant - Lynda Lehmann c 2013

That One Lone Tree - Lynda Lehmann c 2013

Note: You can click on each photo to see a larger version. All images and text on this blog are copyrighted material, and may be used only with written permission, except where syndication rights have been granted. All other rights reserved. Please visit my sites listed in my sidebar if you would like to see my paintings and more of my photography and digital art, or make a purchase.

My Favorite New Design: Line Play 17 Vivid Abstract

This is one of my new designs applied to Zazzle's cool products.   You can find more gift ideas with this design at my Watersky Shop and the pillow is available at Pillows by Lynda.  


I hope you like it!  I see a sweeping, dancing landscape in it, and maybe a few faces, too. But that's just me... What do you see here?


 

Line Play 17 Vivid Cheerful Abstract Throw Pillows by PillowsbyLynda
Browse other Abstract Pillows

 

Line Play 17 Vivid Cheerful Abstract iPhone 5 Covers by WaterSky
More Lynda lehmann at zazzle Casemate Cases

 

Line Play 17 Vivid Cheerful Abstract Mousepad by WaterSky
See more Lynda lehmann at zazzle Mousepads

 

Line Play 17 Vivid Cheerful Abstract Stamp by WaterSky
Create your own personal postage stamps from zazzle.com.

Note: You can click on each photo to see a larger version. All images and text on this blog are copyrighted material, and may be used only with written permission, except where syndication rights have been granted. All other rights reserved. Please visit my sites listed in my sidebar if you would like to see my paintings and more of my photography and digital art, or make a purchase.

"Petallurgy" Digital Floral

 

Petallurgy - Image c Lynda Lehmann

SOLD today at Art.com
Note:  All images and text on this blog are copyrighted material, and may be used only with written permission, except where syndication rights have been granted. All other rights reserved. Please visit my sites listed in my sidebar if you would like to see my paintings and more of my photography and digital art, or make a purchase.

New Messenger Bag at Zazzle Gets "Today's Best" Award

Cool Branching Plant Botanical Messenger Bags by LyndaLehmannFlorals
Browse other Cool Messenger Bags

Come visit my Zazzle shops to see this fun mini-messenger bag and lots of other gift ideas in cool designs and high color!  There's something for everyone, for holidays and most occasions.
When you land on my home page at Watersky you'll see a list of products in the left sidebar, plus a list of my other shops, right there on the home page.  If you enjoy what you see, check back soon, because I'm always adding new designs on new items!
You will find the item below in my shop at Lynda Lehmann Florals.

Note: All images and text on this blog are copyrighted material, and may be used only with written permission, except where syndication rights have been granted. All other rights reserved. Please visit my sites listed in my sidebar if you would like to see my paintings and more of my photography and digital art, or make a purchase.