Flashback Friday - beginnings of abstraction

Waves
Oil on loose canvas
size unknown
est. 1998 © Tina Mammoser
All rights reserved.

An early abstract seascape - created from a photo I took of water hitting the side of a barge on the Thames River in London. This was done with the help of an "abstract seascapes" class I was taking at the time at the Blackheath Conservatoire, and my venture into abstraction. You can see that even here I was simplifying my canvas areas, almost creating colour fields but looking back that wasn't really my intention. Paintings that followed were still very impressionist and my abstraction first came from areas of texture rather than areas of colour.

The colour studies: Your votes!

Well the "vote" for your favourite small studies was fun. Every painting got at least one vote, and there were no totally clear 1 or 2 winners. Just goes to show that we all like different things!

Now I fully admit that it was difficult to see the tiny images but that was sort of part of the plan. Since these are just studies even I will squint at them to get only a very general idea. There was a flaw in the whole things though - some of the paintings aren't quite the colours I would actually use, since I was trying to test out those Daler Rowney paints at the same time (half of which are colours I wouldn't buy). So I still need to go back and possibly compensate for a few by considering the actual palette they would be if big.

Here are your votes! (which came in via the blog, Facebook and direct emails - thanks so much guys!)

This image will enlarge bigger than the original one.

The numbers are your votes. The red ones are my choices but I did not count my own votes in the numbers. And of course I have a slight advantage of knowing what imagery is in my head. ;)

A few surprises both to myself and from your input. A few I immediately turned face down (rejected) got middling votes - the paintings third from the right and the left. On a personal level two others frustrated me. The 4th and 5th from the left were ones I really wanted to work from the photo stage. But the 4th, with a pale strip across the middle, I'm quite sure I've painted before. I need to pull out old canvases and my database and see what this is reminding me of! So that kinda freaks me out. The 5th, with the little white square (a beachhut), just doesn't work at all here. Just plain old disappointment at play for me. The idea is good I think but the composition is very boring - I may play with that one though.

Also worth noting - the votes did fall into a visual bell curve (paintings on the ends got less votes than the middle). The scientist in me would love to do this again with the paintings rearranged to see what the results are!

Black paintings... continued

And the start of a second one - this time 150cm x 120cm (60"x48"). (note: the painting from yesterday is 48"x40"(120cm x 100cm))

Just so you don't think that I actually use any black in these black paintings.

Black paintings...

No narrative on this one, because it's mentally a work in progress as well as painterly. It's the side project that developed from the failed Sky painting.

Flashback Friday - the first horizons?

4 Lake Michigan paintings
Oil on canvas, appx. 21x29cm each
1999 © Tina Mammoser, all rights reserved

These oil paintings are one of those things that you look back at and see the future.

These are pre-horizons. Pre-Lake Michigan series. Pre-abstraction. Pre-bridges and river paintings! In fact, I created these paintings when I first started experimenting with seascapes and abstraction generally - at the time my work was still quite colourful, very impressionist and painterly, and still contained objects (boats, piers, bouys, statues, etc). Figures, portraits and Scottish landscapes were my main output. I hadn't yet focused mainly on water as my subject matter and I certainly hadn't simplified anything down to something as simple as just a horizon line yet.

Painted sitting with my wooden Russian easel and oil paints (and are mainly knife-work too) on the lakefront during a Chicago visit - in winter! These paintings are a somewhat spooky prediction of things to come and clear sign of how much Lake Michigan and my home has influenced all my work.

Small studies finished

My first round a small studies for the Essex coast paintings are finished.

These are 5" canvas paintings of the 11 final sketches chosen. This essentially is the colour round of the studies (the sketches having been black and white - you can see them in last week's post). They're also another quick round of composition.

Some are inherently week - the colour either weakens the composition or they weren't strong enough to start with. A few are automatic contenders for larger paintings.

So out of curiousity, even this small and from this distance which ones catch your eye? Which makes you go "ooh, that would be a cool big painting"?

I'll share my choices and yours in another post!

Greenwich Park paintings now on Etsy!

You may have seen me Twitter it, but for the die-hard blog-only fans here's the news! My Greenwich Park paintings are now available through my Etsy store. (2 have already sold, heading to Australia) If you prefer to buy in GBP you can purchase on my website instead.

What do you think of my new "home" product shots?





Paintings:
"Tate & Lyle Sugar Factory" © Tina Mammoser, 2009
"Towards Squirrel Heaven" © Tina Mammoser, 2009
All rights reserved.