TECHNICAL PERCEPTION, APPROACH AND STYLE OF WORK

TECHNICAL PERCEPTION, APPROACH AND STYLE OF WORK

The art of painting is over and above simple or mere manipulation and rendering of media, theme, topic or concept on canvas. Any organized artist will inevitably find it indispensable to get involved in a discreet struggle to effectively and satisfactorily execute a picture by first taking great care in sketching and planning for it. The Theme, Topic or Concept will immensely dictate the approach to the pictorial organization or planning process, which will in due course give direction or nature of the flow of forces within the composition.

Planning for a Painting in sketches

I normally sketch for my pictures following the principle of; [‘from the simple to the complex' ]

                                                               
                                                                      Gradual stages
                                                                                 1

                                                                                 2

                                                                                 3

                                                                                4                                                                               

                                                                               5

                                                                               6

                                                                                7

                                                             
                                                                     FINAL PIECE

 Starting to paint. Initial Stages to final product

                                                                                                      

                                                   
                                                                    FINAL PIECE

When a painting is in the state of simply “visible inertia”; and without any visible surface material or media kinetics, it should not be regarded dormant or redundant. It subcutaneously wreathes with potent dynamic forces which can be traced and found to be either, horizontal, vertical, circular, square, diagonal, diversionary, obstructive, or existing as multilateral flows within the painting and below its paint.

Invisible Kinetics below the surface of Visible Paint
            

                                                                      SAMPLE 1

                           
                                                                     Related Painting
              

               
                                                                        SAMPLE 2

                                                                     Related Painting

                       
                                                                        SAMPLE 3
                                                                        

                                                                 Related Painting

With many learners of the skill of painting who include self taught artists, and to a certain extent formerly trained ones; are seldom conscious of the dynamism of forces imbedded within the two or three dimensional works of art they venture to create.

The most explicit tendency in their mental processes as they execute works of art; is more often the physical metamorphosis of the idea onto the canvas or in 3D space, other than  focusing on the dynamism of the forces running through the composition or work of art; which may either be two or three dimensional.

Just like how an architect plans for his buildings and knows how their walls will assume particular shapes and projections in space, layout and movements on the ground, I do put great consideration to the planning process of my paintings. This takes into account that a painting is not all about applying paint onto the surface of canvas and covering the images involved in the compositions, but an awareness of the existence of a dynamic flow of forces that lie underneath the two dimensional surface of paint and moving into various directions, guides the flow of paint on top of the underlying plan of the picture in process.

My work attempts to unveil and bring to the surface, the invisible subcutaneous silent but salient juxtapositions of forces of form, content drifts within subject matter, as derived from the images drawn by my creative, automatic, conscious and subconscious mental processes.

All this costs me a calculated and organized mental process; involving considerations of division of space, balance of forces, content readability together with its visual and mental flows, subject-matter distribution and sometimes mathematics or calculations based on ratios and percentages, or technical drawing with orthographic and isometric projections; and to a large extent hidden details based on intuition, instinct, serendipity, automatism, surrealism, surrealistic automatism, expressionism or symbolism and  philosophic procedures related to particular concepts.

Apart from works done through automatism, surrealistic automatism or serendipity, most of the paintings I make do follow and respect the procedure stated in the paragraph above.

My works range from miniatures to large paintings and murals; from the realistic to the abstract; or pictures with realistic forms but with abstracted content; or a sandwich of the realistic and abstract.

The works I execute normally spend no less than four months or a year in my mind. Meanwhile, they are being mentally sketched and occasionally re arranged. Later, after confirming the idea and conceptual approach, I visibly begin to sketch in my sketch book. However, the sketches I make are not curved in stone. When I start to paint, allowance is given to the brain as it provides new Images and adjustments. In this light, my finished paintings are never replicas of their primary sketches. In spite of these allowances for the brain to give new ideas, the theme, Title or concept remains constant.