Gender Identities

Life has taken on the quality of fullness often I achieve in December and May: A fire hose of concentration and social contact. This past week I conversed with about 150 people, about a third of them new acquaintances. I am working on carrying out my marketing plan and meeting lots of new people in the process. I see the intense social nature of my life expressed in my art. Small figures dance and interact across the painting. I have added dioxazine purple mixed with white and magenta mixed with white to the palette. Then I spent time the past two weeks just looking at the piece. It takes some time to pull the final pieces together into a complete work of art. The deer in the center has taken on two gender identities, buck on the left and doe on the right. There is a single head, with ear currently white outlined in orange or red. I begin to also see a fawn in the lower right corner.

Fertility

I added the front of the deer’s long nose in primary yellow. I knew a while ago that the color would be there, but I hesitated unsure of the shape. I don’t know why I do that because the shapes are rarely, if ever, premeditated. I connected the large yellow pieces of the antler together and attached it to the deer’s head using cadmium yellow deep hue. Deer are rutting in meadow outside my window, and at dusk they dance across the meadow. I have to drive carefully on the winding roads so as not to run into one.

I also see many small dancing couples around the white figure with the round pregnant belly. Each of their heads are a sincgle color.

Will White Be a Color?

Magenta mixed with white really brightened the whole painting. I begin to think rainforest and that I should use more green. The yellow is what I started with and I feel drawn to complete the color theme I began. As usual the question arises: How much white do I leave? Is white a color in this piece? When the artwork is done I will know it.

Adding Blues

Now comes the challenge of piecing the images together. The yellow is distributed across the canvas evenly with a long arc of primary yellow from the top left to the bottom middle. In the whole sweep I see the outline of a guinea pig head with the dark yellow surrounded by light yellow in the center as the nose, the large yellow circle as the eye. The large yellow circle is also beginning to look like an prehistoric goddess sculpture round and fertile.

I have changed the green mixture to phthalo green (blue shade) and primary yellow, and painted it over each shape. It is almost impossible to see the difference separately, but next to other colors it blends so much better. Phthalo green (blue shade ) and white in various saturations are also spead across the canvas. Ultramarine blue alone and mixed with white is the next layer of color. I know that in theory blues are supposed recede in a painting, but I often paint them as foreground.

Sally Rayn
Dynamic Symbolism

Expanding Color Range

Outside the poison oak is turning red and orange. We just had the heaviest October rain fall in 40 years, and the usual October warm spell has caused all the tiny green sprouts to start popping up on the dry meadow outside my studio, and my vegetable/flower garden is getting a second wind with beautiful crimson pineapple sage flowers. A pair of hummingbirds joined me there this morning.

Photo 5:
Everything still seems so disjointed. This is where the painting drags on my energies, and it becomes difficult to reconcile or to choose new colors. I want to add large patches of yellow to connect shapes, but each yellow piece is so interesting that I don’t want to lose any of them in the larger areas. I added greens that I mixed using primary yellow and phthalo green (yellow shade). I prefer phthalo green (blue shade) for mixing, and I plan to switch to that. Green is such a fiddly color, requiring several coats per shape. I then added cobalt teal for the lighter blue green. No new images jump out at me right now.

Seeing More Red

My inclination now is towards larger shapes. I think I am painting very large shapes while I stand or sit close to the canvas, but upon stepping back, I realize that the shapes are not so large compared to the whole. I am also getting the sense that once I paint a variety of colors using smaller details, the spaces in between can be filled up with larger areas of the same color.

I am satisfying the desire for more yellow, but I want even more. The crimson next to cadmium red medium is an appealing combination. I am starting to see red bird beaks on the upper left and in the center at the top. A tulip like flower has begun at the lower center edge next to the long yellow bean sprout-like shape. Next to it I also see a thin light yellow figure hugging a plump dark yellow and orange figure. They seem happy to see each other. On the right edge, a friend pointed out a monkey with a red tail.

Sally Rayn
Dynamic Symbolism

Building the fire

Photo 3: I added naphthol crimson (what I consider real red) in small spaces then added more of each color used so far. I think in the end, or closer to the end, I will create a video fade of the pictures to show the progression.

The same pear shape now looks more calf-like with its large yellow nose, especially next to the deer with the red nose (Rudolph? ha, ha : ) and broad expanse of yellow antler spreading across the canvas towards the top left. The two orange lines leaning right across the top center definitely seem like insect antennae. The crimson curve below and to the right of them suggests a cheek bone of sorts.

I see a contingency of little dancing figures and couples starting to form along the bottom edge and up the left side. The large yellow circle anchors that side.

Still I feel the need for more yellow.

Adding firey colors

Photo 2: I added cadmium yellow dark hue, then cadmium orange, then cadmium red medium. The game I play to keep me in my seat and painting is: I must completely use all the paint I squeeze out on my pallet. Because acrylics dry so quickly, I tend to paint in the same color for a while. This has also led to creating small canvas covered boards, using the left over paint. I have started two square 6x6” boards that I am painting along with this one.

The upside down pear that attracted my attention now has a dark yellow “eye”. I see an animal face forming, maybe a deer with a yellow neck line? Across the center I see lots of insect-like shapes: locust or praying mantis? I still want more large light yellow shapes!!

A beginning

This canvas is 36 x 48”, and I view it horizontally while I paint. I am drawn to the yellows in “Goddess and her Consort” and I want to paint them on a grander scale. I should note that I paint around the edge of the canvas and the 1.5 inch edges are extensions of the artwork and can be viewed as paintings in their own right from the side. You will have to come see the originals to get the full impact.

Photo 1: I used a long handled #16 round brush and primary yellow paint for all the shapes. My reaction is to paint more yellow and use even larger shapes. There is an awkward shape, sort of an upside down pear with a long stem. It bothers me.

Dynamic Symbolism - A description

A deep appreciation of the flow of abstract line, form and color motivates me in my journey as a contemporary artist. I have created my own artistic style, Dynamic Symbolism. My technique uses stream of consciousness guided by intuition to connect scattered forms and colors into works of art in which viewers find their own concrete images. I have no preconceived plan for any painting. You, the audience must address the content of my art rather than try to interpret my intent. This artistic style encourages the creative freedom to interact with art. Viewers form their own borders with reference to their own backgrounds. The symbols that you see are dynamic, they change, and they are open to your own interpretation. Each viewer finds something different, and everyone’s opinion is valid. Every viewing of the art contains the possibility of seeing something new.

My goal here is to chronicle the development of several paintings, photographing as I go and writing my view of the symbols I create. I invite input from my readers to search out the connections I miss and to add to the story surrounding each work of art. I want to explore the idea that we actually see from a cultural viewpoint.