535 I 2008

March 2008 - Classical Formalism - sub-group of minimalism but much harder to do because of the rules one must meet in order for a piece to be a true CLASSICAL FORMALISM one - geometric format - division of space - lines & angles - a piece must be taken down to its foundation which the piece is built upon - I like to say the piece has been stripped to its bones - I am using a B & W non-color palette for this series I am currently creating - this is the 2nd Piece in the Series -I used one of the hardest stock fills in my art program to make this piece - it is a conical fill which I set to custom settings - this is the hardest kind of piece to pull off using this fill with custom settings - the part that is so hard to do is to get the clean crisp edges where the black angular areas meet the white angular areas - another thing which is hard to do is to obtain an even gradation from pure white to a very light gray - the other difficult thing to do is to make the black areas completely black - once I had the piece created I then used the vertical control to raise & lower the piece - in this case I made raised it up past horizontal center in the picture plane or format of the piece - then I used the horizontal control to move the piece towards the left edge of the piece - I did this so my composition would become not symmetrical & give it a more interesting appearance - I have met the rule for a geometric format - I have divided the space with the black & the white angles - where are the lines you are asking - they are the edges of both the black & white angular shapes - I have successfully met all the demands in order for this to be A True Classical Formalism Piece - when you are looking at this piece you notice you cannot remained focused on any one part for any length of time - this is caused by the diagonal lines in the piece - they are creating a visual tension I set up on a 2D format - the longest angular shapes help to create depth in this piece also - another thing happening in this piece is the dynamics of negative & positive space - the white angles come forward & then the solid black angles come forward - this is what happens when you bring negative & positive space into play in any piece - this is a very clean & pristine piece which contains no clutter - I placed a wide black contour line around the piece so its edges would be defined - this gives the a black border plus gives it a very clean & finished presentation