Creative Cogitation

In the midst of the Binary Birds series I was con­tacted out of the blue by an artist out of  Florida.  She com­mented on my paint­ing Mother Night, which made me think about it some.  Since I am in the midst of my 100 Paint­ings projects I do not turn down any ideas that feed the muse.  So I revis­ited Mother Night this week­end while I was fin­ish­ing hoot­suite.

Both paint­ings had me in the night mode.  I am noc­tur­nal.  I love the night, the stars, the moon, and the gen­eral qui­etude.  I am mar­ried to a morn­ing per­son, so from about 8 PM to when­ever I decide to rest, I get a big block of unin­ter­rupted time; such a thing is pre­cious to all artists-it allows you to get deep into your zone.

Mother Night’s Embrace, by Jake Beck­man. An abstract dragon unfurls its starry wings, embrac­ing the moon. The neg­a­tive space of the night sky forms the watch­ful eye of Mother Night.

I have been work­ing in a square for­mat for the last cou­ple of paint­ings.  The NYC art show is com­ing up and the max­i­mum dimen­sions of the works allowed are 25 x 25 inches, or other vari­ant, so long as they do not occupy more than 50 x 25 inches.  25 x 25 is an odd size, but 24-inch square can­vases are easy enough to come by. I don’t usu­ally work in  a square for­mat; I pre­fer rec­tan­gu­lar can­vases which lend them­selves bet­ter to apply­ing the golden sec­tion. So I embarked on a new ver­sion of Mother Night work­ing in this alien square for­mat.  After cre­at­ing sev­eral sketches using my Wacom tablet in Pho­to­shop, the image of the dragon cre­at­ing neg­a­tive space in the sky sug­ges­tive of an eye started to emerge.  Once I had that idea, every­thing sort of fell into place.

I think it is a such a cool idea I may have to explore it fur­ther. I love the images of the night, the moon and stars.  I also have an affin­ity for drag­ons and other fly­ing crit­ters as well.  And the idea of using neg­a­tive space in this way also intrigues me some.

Mother Night’s Embrace clearly has noth­ing to do with the Binary Birds, but belongs to another series Abstract Con­cepts, so I have gone off the reser­va­tion for this one paint­ing, and I hope you like it.

If you would like to pur­chase Mother Night’s Embrace, please see its page on my web­site; you can pur­chase it using Pay­pal.  Thanks for stop­ping by.

If you are in the New York City area between Sep­tem­ber 16 and Sep­tem­ber 30, 2010 — you can see Mother Night’s Embrace and a work from the Binary Birds series, hoot­suite, at the Broad­way Gallery, 473 Broad­way in SOHO.  The Gallery is open Mon-Fri 10 AM-6 PM. The artists’ recep­tion is from 3–6 PM Sat­ur­day Sep­tem­ber 25, 2010.  Look­ing for­ward to see­ing you there. 

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

I fin­ished this paint­ing more than a month ago.  I can’t believe it has taken me that long to upload the images to my web­site and to sit down and blog about it.  As John Lennon said, “Life is what hap­pens while you are mak­ing other plans.”  So true for me too.  I found myself spend­ing sev­eral weeks deal­ing with feral cat issues, softy that I am.  Adding that one thing really put me behind on every­thing and so these paint­ings lan­guished in the obscu­rity of my studio.

But no more.  Since June 27, 2010 was a total washout on paint­ing I endeav­ored to “catch up” on my blog­ging, and my web­site main­te­nance among other things. I cranked out quite a few so I can post them later. It’s now later for this blog, enjoy.

Bridge is a spin off on iPod Tweety and iPod ads in gen­eral, but it is also a con­trast as well. Once I did iPod Tweety, one of the first things that came to mind was a per­son who con­ducts an imag­i­nary orches­tra while lis­ten­ing to a record­ing of some kind. The cock­a­too became the obvi­ous bird because of the crest. I dunno but I think of con­duc­tors as hav­ing shocks of unruly hair stick­ing up.  Con­duc­tors usu­ally wear dark suits so the bird in sil­hou­ette also tracked in my mind. 

But unlike the music behind Rock Me! clas­si­cal music has lay­ers, move­ments, changes in melody, key and other such devices that gen­er­ally imply a more com­plex arrange­ment; besides most clas­si­cal works are much longer than your aver­age pop radio tune.  With this in mind I set out to make my abstract back­ground con­vey­ing this com­plex­ity and pas­sage of time.  I chose green.  The back­ground is a very dark green, which is over­laid with bright green and then light sea green. I did sev­eral waves of color sweep­ing from the top of the can­vas to the bot­tom around the con­duc­tor bird as a melody.  I placed a series of thick bright spires behind the cock­a­too oppo­site these waves, I think of them as a deep throb­bing base­line.  Finally I painted some thin ver­ti­cals that were much lighter in color to con­vey a sprin­kling of high notes.  The top of the paint­ing is lighter in color and the bot­tom is still bright green but much darker, the waves and ver­ti­cal lines “bridge” the two zones. I also have some tex­tural ele­ments in the waves and the thick bright spires. Of course while I was paint­ing it I was not in this lit­eral “this means that mode,” I was feel­ing the music. 

Bridge, by Jake Beck­man. A crested cock­a­too con­ducts and imag­i­nary sym­phony while lis­ten­ing to its iPod. The green back­ground is an abstract rep­re­sen­ta­tion of clas­si­cal music.

That was the thought behind Bridge.  I hope you like this dif­fer­ent take on Binary Birds, iPods and music.  Any com­ments?  If you would like more details about Bridge or would like to buy it, please see its page at AKAJake.com.

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.