Thank You for the Tragedy I Need It for My Art Shirt

Painters pigment for many reasons, and I believe emotion is one of those. The human activity of painting in itself can be a release of feelings, or a manner to handle life events. And then emotion plays a function in the making of the work, only information technology also plays a function in the viewing of the work. Some artists similar to plan alee, with a specific intention for the painting's response by a viewer. While other artists permit for a broad variety of responses while viewing the painting. Either way, emotion is one attribute – and maybe a significant one – for painting.

While attention a show of works by a friend of mine, I was reminded about how emotion can play a major role for painting. I was asked to give a talk to the show's attendees during the evidence, and felt an urge to write nearly it here.

Sometimes it's best to say no

That's what was going through my head a few days before my friend Gigi Mills had her solo gallery show. A select group of her collector's was invited to a private cocktail political party the evening prior to her opening. Bright marketing thought. And I had been asked to give a public talk about her paintings at this political party.

How difficult can it exist?

I was familiar with her work, and I've given public talks most fine art before. I said yes. I began writing out a program. My heed raced, adrenaline pumped. Why was I then nervous? I wrote, rewrote, edited, rewrote over again – and worried. Would my friend notwithstanding similar me in the morning?

I wrote for many hours – way more than then I outset thought would be required. I stuck with speaking from the heart and with my honest opinion. More importantly, I wrote with the intention to go the audition to Look – to spend more time with the paintings on display. That WAS the point after all, correct? Anyhow, spoiler alert – all went well in the cease, I received several thank-you from attendees, got into some fun and heated artistic arguments about a few of the ideas I presented, and paintings sold.

How to give a public talk without feeling nervous

Non possible. At to the lowest degree in my opinion. Just be OK with the fear, suck information technology up, and do it anyway. Information technology'due south worth it. Every bit an artist, it'southward practiced to speak in public. Gets united states of america introvert artists out of the studio, and practice talking virtually fine art. Whether your own – or someone else's. Doesn't affair. It's all good.

Hither is my draft for the talk. Continue in mind I encouraged audience participation – questions and interruptions – calculation a lively banter and some boosted deviations non in the typhoon. The artist is Gigi Mills. Her work is represented by GF Contemporary, an art gallery located in my hometown Santa Iron, New Mexico. Her evidence is titled Prima Materia on exhibit fall of 2019.

It began with the usual thank-yous and introductions…. I'll spare yous all that and dive correct in.

MY TALK

I consider Gigi Mills a principal painter and believe in her piece of work wholeheartedly.
And here's why.

Laundry/Hanging the White Sheet, oil on console, 24″ x xviii″, Gigi Mills

When I look at paintings I search for an prototype that has PRESENCE – an immediate visual appeal, an impact, along with a sense of daring and originality from the artist. Generally, something of the unexpected. All of this I find in Gigi'due south work.

I can tell this is a sophisticated audience, and so delight humor me while I starting time with a simple question – What is a painting? Basically, it'south an image painted on a apartment surface. This definition however, would work for wallpaper too as painting, right? Both are images on a apartment surface. Then here'due south where it gets fun and tricky! Evidently (at to the lowest degree in my mind) wallpaper and painting are Non the aforementioned. Good wallpaper designers create their work to be seen as periphery or background so the imagery volition not upstage the people and room where it adorns the wall.

A painter on the other mitt, wants someone to take discover. They want their painted image to exist seen! And not just a quick glance, just indeed with riveting effect. So much so that the viewer will gaze at the piece of work long enough to fully engage, brand a connection with the painter, and in the end have a meaningful experience. A painting is a vehicle of advice between painter and viewer.

What's your firsthand reaction to a painting?

When looking at art I similar to pay attention to my commencement response. Is it intellectual or emotional? Is the immediate impact a idea or a feeling? A painting tin stimulate both,

Andy Warhol, 1962, acrylic on canvas, xvi″ x 20″, Museum of Mod Art, NYC, photo by Hu Totya – wikipedia.org

but commonly one is more than immediate than the other. Andy Warhol'southward soup can paintings give usa a good instance of an image that provokes an intellectual response. Yep they have artful appeal, but Warhol's chief intent I believe, is for the viewer to think about the relationship between commercialism, marketing and the art world. With Warhol, it's the Idea nosotros probably notice beginning.

Gigi's piece of work on the other mitt, is primarily emotional. Yes the images have narrative elements and can stimulate thought, but emotion is what hits u.s.a. foremost. Practice y'all hold? And it'southward OK to disagree. That's an essential aspect of fine art – to inspire word. Is at that place any particular painting here that y'all experience brings up a specific emotion?

Some emotions offered by the audience: mystery, intrigue, pensive, melancholy, tenderness, meditative, sense of awe, a stillness, longing, desire, wonder, confinement, aliveness, romantic, surprise, peaceful, spiritual, expansive.

Expansive – that's an interesting one I had non idea of before. Can y'all indicate out one of the paintings that feel expansive to you? (Night Sky & Starfish, was pointed out as example.)

Night Sky & Starfish, mixed media on paper, eighty″ x 46″, Gigi Mills

How to paint emotion

The other mean solar day Gigi and I were pondering the question – How do you paint emotion? The first thing that came to mind was COLOR. Color is always contained in some shape – in both life and in art. For instance we look up at our seemingly limitless blue sky above merely the view is cut off at some point – is framed by buildings, trees, etc. Even a Marking Rothko color field painting uses squares within squares, subtle though they may exist. And ultimately all paintings are contained by the outside edges of the canvas its painted on.

Color and its shape or container. This pairing lone will convey emotion equally clearly as a Shakespeare tragedy. Wassily Kandinsky was ane of the first artists to write about this, dorsum in the early 1900's with his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art.

For Kandinsky, yellow held the sound of a shrill canary, while bluish was a deep bass notation. Put the yellowish in a circumvolve and the shrill is softened, while in a triangle with its sharp angles the shrill is heightened. Like the orchestra concerts he attended in Russia back then, he felt sounds conveyed firsthand emotions and additionally held spiritual value. It was his life's piece of work to pigment using colour in abstruse shapes, to recreate the emotion he felt while listening to a concert.

Recently Gigi paid me a visit all excited well-nigh just finishing a painting for her show. She had been working on this one very intensely. She burst in proverb, "I found the perfect colour – and now information technology works!" She went on about the many layers of colour information technology took to reach the finale – the concluding effect, mood and feeling she was afterwards.

I was reminded of Piet Mondrian, one of our masters from the last century, who had been known to spend a year on a unmarried color of blueish. Like stories abound well-nigh other modern masters like Mark Rothko, taking lengths of time to obtain perfection in colour. But like Gigi, they understood the value of color precision.

Color & shape are major means to express emotion

Nude in a Bluish Room, oil on console, sixteen″ x 12″, Gigi Mills

This painting, Nude in a Blueish Room is primarily cool. (Bluish colors are usually felt as a cool temperature). Gaze at this painting and see what blazon of emotion comes upwardly for you lot. At present imagine this painting swapping out the absurd blues for warm colors – similar reds or yellows. The mood would change drastically! Gigi's paintings make frequent apply of master colors – reddish, yellow, blue. Left full strength and mostly unmixed, these colors can evoke assuming primal feelings.

Pairing brights with neutrals adds sophistication and a sense of mystery. Gigi's use of rich blacks and stark whites, recalls early blackness and white movies. Remember the way an sometime Alfred Hitchcock mystery movie felt? Like film noir the use of neutrals sets us upwardly for a larger-than-life feeling.

Color layered over color volition fine-tune emotion. Gigi ofttimes starts with a bright color, then layers over it several times to either intensify the colour with more brights, or exercise the opposite and subdue information technology with neutrals – depending on the mood she wants to express.

Calling the Hounds, oil on canvas, 21″ x 29″, Gigi Mills

Take a close wait at the dogs in Calling the Hounds.We run into a bright pink color that is nonetheless visible, raw and sketchy, not covered over with more than paint layers. This same pinkish was besides used underneath the expanse of gray background. Gigi calls this type of layering brilliant under quiet.

Still Life with Blue Artichokes & Oranges, oil on board, 17″ x 13″, Gigi Mills

In Still Life with Blue Artichokes & Oranges, the small touches of rich bright orange are encased by neutrals – those soft muted grays. A riveting focus on the orangish is like finding jewels in a treasure box.

Magic places to ponder that are easy to miss

Some other aspect that creates emotion is EDGES. I'm not talking nigh the edges of the sheet. Instead I'm referring to the identify where one color shape touches another color shape within the painting itself. The edge between shapes. This is a magic place responsible for creating emotion, but often working in our unconscious and not visibly obvious.

Calling the Hounds/Morning, oil on panel, 12″ x 16″, Gigi Mills

For example, here is the image in full ofCalling the Hounds/Morning, as well equally an enlarged detail and then we can more than hands encounter how the edges are handled.

Detail

As I mentioned before, Gigi layers color to become the quality she wants. As each layer is applied, the overpainted colour layer stops but a bit short of roofing the underlying colour completely. We can see this all-time at the edges, where the layers are revealed. Check out how the orangish color of the shirt doesn't quite touch the gray background, and instead leaves a vivid hairline halo. Another case is found with the sparse line of pink between the dogs' outline and the background color. These modest yet stiff multi-colored places at the border add together a visual vibration to the viewing feel.

Reduce detail to increase emotion

Another aspect in painting that expresses emotion is style and more than specifically where it fits on the scale of abstract to realistic. For me, Gigi'southward piece of work rides the line between these. Since there doesn't seem to be any universal definition for abstract or realistic painting, for our purposes permit's say abstraction minimizes detail, while realism relies more heavily on the add-on of detail.

One of Gigi's intentions is to prove emotion without having to be totally graphic, without dotting all the i's. She may start with a vision, and then includes only what is essential to evoke a certain space or form. What is left out allows for more than viewer interpretation, to trigger our own personal response, our own experiences and stories.

A simple horizontal line indicates where ground meets heaven, or table meets wall. We see how  adeptly she uses minimal detail – merely plenty for recognition. The more item, the more than the artist controls the viewing response. The less detail, the more open up the painting remains for the viewer to interpret the prototype for themselves.  As a painting leans more towards abstraction, the paradigm gains more energy, adding to a deeper connexion betwixt artist and viewer. Imperfection plays a function to create mood as well. Gigi's choice to elongate, exaggerate and distort forms, especially noticeable in the nudes and figures, adds a sense of the unexpected. This distortion reminds us that being human is virtually being imperfect.

What makes a successful painting?

Work that entices us to look deeply and to experience deeply. A mystery to investigate, a story to unfold, an intimate glimpse into the personal. We tin analyze a painting with words, pause information technology down into concepts, but this volition never be the whole story. There are no formulas. Artists must constantly invent and re-invent. To use a formula ways an creative person doesn't have to stay conscious in the deed, or exist that raw nervus that connects them through the work to the viewer. Using a formula for product, the work loses its edge and lacks spirit or soul.

Gigi calls her testify Prima Materia – the base of operations of all affair, coming from spirit or source. This title well expresses her desire for the images to get beyond their external form – the content or subject area matter, be information technology a dog, horse, figure – and instead allow the inner spirit to be revealed. Some other way to enhance the artist-viewer connection.

A painting that gets our attention relies on the openness of the painter, their vulnerability, being unafraid to share their inner side, their deepest emotions. Not just share, only bring information technology into tangible course. This daring I experience, is what makes a painter and their paintings great. When the artist goes deep and feels information technology in their gut, the viewer can also. A neat painting, regardless of content, style or medium, will connect us to our experience of existence homo.

This is what attracts me then passionately to the work of main artist, my friend and colleague, Gigi Mills.

Which brings usa to the finish of my talk.
Give thanks yous for your time and attention.

Photo credits: Top photograph past Allison Holley.
All painting photos past Gigi Mills.

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Source: https://nancyreyner.com/2019/09/29/how-to-give-a-public-talk-on-your-friends-art-without-losing-your-friend/