Where Your Shapes Meet

There are an infinite number of nuanced relationships that can occur between our shapes. These important transitions can be rendered in many different ways. They can be quite calculated, or they could happen by chance because of the application and removal of your materials. These in-between moments are always something to pay attention to because they play a big role in activating the vibrancy and life force in a painting. Catching them in the right moment can be challenging and require finesse. Learning to pay attention is the key! 

Broadview ll,  30x30 oil on canvas 

How do these moments happen? By chance, and then we notice and intervene? Sometimes we become aware that we need to do more. We finesse the relationship, adding marks, scraping away a bit and rebuilding the relationships as we go. We pay devotional attention to our shapes edges, boundaries and connections.

This business in-between your shapes is multi-faceted. It not only helps to describe the personality of each shape itself, but also its relationship to the shapes around it. The way you handle these transitions sets the mood for your painting sensibility. Do you gravitate towards smudges, expressive lines, blurred edges, hard edges, scratches, or pulling back with the palette knife? You could add a brushstroke, make something darker, or make something lighter. 

Let's take a look at a variety of works by different artists and see how they approach this phenomenon. Below is a painting by Gary Komarin. With its electric yellow background, open spaces and playful shapes, it does exude happiness. 

Gary Komarin, The Geometry of Love, 70x60, mixed media on canvas

When we take a closer look at this grouping of unique shapes in the center of this painting, they are connected, but in a number of different ways. A rectangle juts out from the right side. It is activated inside with some loose lines. These lines directly relate to the line work that connects it with the irregular shape next door, which is speckled with green marks. I've circled some important moments in the image below. 

This speckled irregular shape then abuts the shape below, just slightly brushing against it at one point. To visually connect them more so, with a similar attribute, the artist has added a downward sloping nose to each one. Next, we can follow the drips, both white and orange, that connect our eyes to the orange "peanut" shape below. In between this peanut and the white square that it sits on, is some playful mark making, but notice the complexity in this area. There is some white space, some yellow splats and criss-crossing lines.

All of this activity creates great interest and energy. Finally, the white square, activated with same line work as above, drips down to the bottom of the canvas, connecting us there. These main shapes, the focal point of the painting, are awkwardly stacked through the center. They lead our eye with a wonderful variation of marks and paint applications. We stop and go, examining the details, while the yellow background unifies it all into a satisfying whole.  

Do your shapes balance precariously on top of one another? Kiss each other, smother or resist? Do they rubber-band back and forth or create tension? Have they fused into one? 

These important meeting points can happen where your shape abuts another shape or where a shape meets an edge or a background. Let's take a look at this Matisse. It's painted with a limited color palette and combines recognizable objects with a structured array of abstract elements. There are strong diagonals and high contrast. Combining painting and drawing elements, it gives the feeling of both real and imagined space. Several areas are enlivened by the scratching in of lines. 

 Matisse, Goldfish and Palette, 1915

In these closer segments, we can see how Matisse was expanding and activating his edges, a kind of searching for the placement of things. While some edges in this painting are more precise and rigid, others have escaped their boundaries. In the first image we can see where the fishbowl was orginally painted and then we can see where it was expanded upon and redrawn. This addition to the shape, which seems created by scratching in with some tool, adds depth and interest and also creates a different relationship with the dark shape behind. In the second image, another edge is activated with these scratched in drawing lines. It has a very different feeling than the more rigid edge that is opposite. 

Different tools create different effects. A smudge may be what's asked for, or a scratch. Perhaps a more exact edge is needed to bring the eye right to that place. These decisions, made consciously or unconsciously during the painting process, must be recognized by the artist and made important.

They will be seen more clearly during those times of deep looking, the scrutinizing of all the details. Perhaps an edge was generated spontaneously, and a few marks stand out as the most immediate and lively on the canvas. These may remind us of the carefree moments at the beginning of the work and could remain untouched to maintain the life-force energy on the canvas. Other areas between shapes, might be finessed over and over again.  

Here is a gorgeous monotype collage by Robert Szot. In relation to the open space and the simplicity of the composition, the language of the shapes needs to be just right; their expression, placement and relationships. The composition is weighted to the right side with the bold colorful forms. On the left side, and above, there is a delicate, smudged background, the results of the printmaking process.   

Robert Szot, The Lion's Eye, mixed media

The blue shape has two boundaries. The first, is the very thin printed line that surrounds the shape all the way down to where it meets the black irregular rectangle. The blue fills this delicate space, but is placed inside at a slight angle and ends before touching the bottom. The second set of boundaries are the varied edges of blue shape itself. 

Let's take a closer look. At the top it has a straight, clear edge. On the left side a small inky half circle juts out. This is a beautiful moment. This grayish mark causes our eye to linger here instead of sliding right down the angled edge. It creates tension between itself and printed line, and on the other side of the line is tiny black dot. The bottom of the shape is curved and irregular, softer than the top edge. And just ever so faintly, almost invisible, is an inky light blue water mark that connects us downward. This trace acts as part of the larger shape and connects us gently to the edge. 

And here's the thing...all of these minute moments, these seemingly small bits are what make a painting sing and also make it whole. The artist makes choices to include something, or to edit something or to add, but the viewer initially responds to the whole, unknowing of all the decisions that were made. The gorgeous, imperfect image that makes your heart sing was most likely labored over, even if it looks seamless at first. As artists we learn to see and recognize what works, what doesn't and what's possible. 

In this second image, there is another wonderful shape relationship. A ghost of a form abuts with a more defined form. They are a similar size and mirror each other, but they are rendered in completely different ways. It is this contrast and the defined dark edge of the brighter shape that catches our eye. In the one, the edges are soft and almost disappear into the background, and in the other, the bareness of the paper pops forward outlined with the clear dark line. 

The business between all of these shapes in The Lion's Eye, may have occurred spontaneously, or it could have been modified, but it all feels masterful. Each edge and in-between moment contributes to the personality of the shapes and the roles they play in the overall feeling of the piece.  

All painters are making these decisions about shape relationships no matter if they are working in a very loose painterly manner, or a more hard-edged geometric style, realistically or non-objectively. In the image below by Richard Diebenkorn, there are a few different ways of addressing the edges of shapes in one painting. The overall work is gestural and painterly, even though some areas are blocked out with larger swaths of color. 

Richard Diebenkorn, Berkeley #37, oil on canvas 70x70

In the first image below, two colors meet in a very flat, immediate way. They are tightly abutted with not much extra information, solid variations of the same color along a curved line. This singular sharp edge, in contrast with the rest of the painting, is eye catching! In the second image, we see some lively, disruptive marks, and layered lines. This grouping is one of the focal points in the painting. Perhaps one of those larger swaths of color underneath was pulling horizontally across the canvas. Maybe details were needed to curtail that trajectory. This action filled moment certainly interrupts the horizontal flow and wedges itself in-between things. This whole cross section if filled with wonderful connectors and transitions between shapes. 

In this next piece by Ky Anderson, we see a very different paint application. The water based acrylic on paper calls for a lighter touch with more transparencies. Shapes are connected by a web of curvilinear lines, both in the background and the foreground. The more solid shapes connect cleanly edge to edge and sometimes balance at their smallest points. Movement is everywhere and our eye glides easily back and forth weaving through all the parts. 

Ky Anderson, Scattered, 57x42, acrylic on paper

Let's first take a closer look at this blue shape. It sits on top, pushing itself to the foreground by overlapping both the grey shape above it and the yellow shape below it. It both attaches and overlaps by being physically painted over these other areas. The meeting places of these shapes tell us what is in front and what is in behind.

This happens again when we look at the large yellow shape on the bottom and the warm gray areas that surround it. The edge of the warm gray on the right overlaps the yellow. It is on top. This hard edge projects it forward and pushes the yellow behind it. On the other side however, the warm gray recedes into the background because the yellow edge is clearly painted on top. The phenomenon of what is in front and what is behind, the creation of space, in an abstract work, can be confusing. But the edges of your shapes can tell us all about this! In this particular situation, the yellow is both in front of something and also behind something. This demonstrates how important the edges of your shapes can be! Even minute brushstrokes or marks can push a thing forward or back. 

All of these paintings can be examined even more closely. What they have in common is a unified whole that is made up of numerous parts that all work together and talk to each other. Exciting configurations that illuminate each painter's abstract sensibilities and remind us how infinite this process can be. Next time you're standing in front of your painting, keep these magical moments in mind!  

[Lead image: Ky Anderson]