Foothill Neighborhood
2024
Original mixed media watercolor on homemade paper collage surface
24” x 10”
This image is digitally mounted
They look like robots walking around in the foothills of a southwestern landscape. The little characters on the paths look like those characters in Oskar Schlemmer’s Triadisches Ballet. This ballet is an inspiration for this piece. That, and, of course, the Bauhaus school of art and design. I have been reading Paul Klee’s volume one book titled The Thinking Eye, which goes into detail about his thought processes and theories behind his abstract art. I’ve learned a lot so far about space, line, shape, and color.
Gradients and progressions stand out in particular to me currently. The illusory creation of space using delineated gradients and progressions will never cease to repel and fascinate me in cycles of disgust and redemption. I get disgusted by the limitations of two dimensions to work with in attempting to suggest dimensions past the third. But I then get fascinated by the possibility of successfully visually communicating dimensions past the third utilizing only the surface of a two dimensional plane.
The simultaneity is already accomplished on a two dimensional surface because you don’t see the eventful sequences of times I built up the image you’re looking at. You just see it all at once. This instantaneous production reflected in your mind is a doorway to other dimensions.
This mixed media watercolor painting is painted on glued together pieces of paper, pages from magazines, and printouts. Before drawing the linear composition, in which I filled in the spaces with watercolors, I washed the surface with a diluted primer paint so that the images and text from the collaged surface would show through to the eye, hence subtly emphasizing the notion of layers built up through sessions of work and time. I used variations of the color yellow to fill the spaces of the buildings because yellow is a bright, warm, outstanding color to use against a more neutral background.
I intentionally made a progression from light to dark with the lines dividing the landscape from foreground to background, and then the sky. The sky is an evening or early morning dark blue. I wanted to convey the idea of a staff or lines on a sheet of musical notes. The staff is the hilly lines of the landscape and the notes are the buildings and the characters walking around on the paths. Hence my joy of capturing the illusion of space with abstracted lines, shapes, and colors.
Evan Travnicek
Art of eVan 