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"Design 1" is an attempt on my part to simplify (and complicate) my paintings through the use of basic geometric shapes and color. The square and equilateral triangle were used here. 50% of the triangles are bisected. Each diagonal blue and orange band runs at 60-degree angles with respect to one another. At first glance this looks like a rather complicated design. It may be hard to determine what the overall pattern is (if any). There is one. I will attempt to explain it. Very simply, there are two sets of diagonal and parallel "bands" of orange and blue. I wanted to arrange this as a lattice of colors -- that is to say: I wanted to weave the bands together. One way to see this more clearly is to squint your eyes and try to look for only the blue banding. As you look at the blue bands, you will be able to see they are woven through the orange banding. This larger woven pattern was something I had been interested in developing. I will not go into any detail here, but one thing worth mentioning is that many -- if not most -- of my past attempts to superimpose a design onto a design failed in the sense that there was not an overall symmetry that was maintained. I think this problem may have been due to my deviating too much from the actual geometry of the form(s) involved. This painting overcomes this. It is balanced and succeeds in showing some degree of depth. The orange and blue hues were chosen as a "perfect pair" since they are "direct complements" of each other -- that is, they fall directly opposite one another on the color wheel. There are 9 shades of orange and 9 shades of blue. The "weaving" of each hue with its counterpart hue was done to show the highest possible contrast -- so the light / dark boundaries would show up with optimum results. Finally, there are two other colors I have not mentioned. One is green the other is a magenta color. These were used to further define the symmetry involved AND to show some "background" contrast. They too are 90 degrees away from BOTH the orange and the blue hues on the color wheel. They also are 180 degrees apart on the color wheel (with respect to one another). |