The Sculpture of Eduardo Chillida – where to find Inspiration(10)

On my cycling tour through Munich last Sunday I stopped at the “Pinakothek der Moderne” to check out the iron sculpture of Eduardo Chillida “Buscando la Luz”. Placed outdoors in front of the entry hall this sculpture is left to the influence of any weather, creating thus its own patina and wonderful pattern on the surface (see complete sculpture). Eduardo Chillida, a Basque sculptor died in 2002 in San Sebastian. “Buscando la Luz” (=searching for the light) was his last monumental sculpture.

This sculpture somehow reminds me of plants which have managed to break through the soil in spring time in order to grow towards the light.

The sun immerses the whole sculpture in a wonderful warm brownish red colour – the typical colour of rust and when you go near you realize that there is not only a wonderful colour but a magnificent pattern as well. A true painting by Mother Nature…

Colour Fields on Shopping Center – and where you can find Inspiration(9)

Sounds a bit weird? Maybe – but when you see what I found on one of my last cycling trips through the city besides all those wonderful blossoms trees is the following. Of course I had to stop and photograph these walls:

I don’t know whether the group of architects who designed the outer shell of the center wanted to create something that is reminiscent of the op-art movement in the 60’s of the last century or not but who could deny that there are some resemblances?

Looking not only at these images for a while – as I discovered later when loading them on the computer – but also at the real walls of the shopping center can send you into some trance-like, psychedelic state that seems to be reminiscent of the times of Woodstock and Ashbury Heights. The longer you stare at those colour-fields the more they seem to wiggle and twiggle and move just before your eyes. Did the designers want to turn the potential customer into some frantic shopping robot – I asked myself ? Maybe there are some hidden messages on those walls that tell people what to do – just like in the John Carpenter movie from 1988, “They Live”, starring Meg Foster. This would seem a bit ironical of course due to the fact that part of the 60’s movement was a denial of consumerism.

No matter what the original intent of the architect was I found these sometimes iridescent walls extremely fascinating and inspiring in their purity. What I also found quite interesting was, to realize, that the original intent of the “Hard Edge” (1958 by Jules Langsner) colour field painting techniques was to create an absolutely 2-dimensional feeling on the canvas instead of creating a 3-dimensional impression as for example in realistic styles.

“Hard Edge” , an abstract painting style, adds geometrical forms to one another without reference to classical composition rules, emotions – and seemingly controlled by rational intent only. There are no traces of the brush to be found and the colours are often cold. While “Color-field Painting” often has seamless borders, “Hard Edge” colour-fields are strictly separated.

The walls I found on this shopping center interestingly enough proved to be exactly what the “Hard Edge” movement required: although 3-dimensional in reality, not only through being part of a building of course, but also through the form of the panels, which look like an accordion, they nevertheless appeared 2-dimensional, because the colour-fields simply tricked the eye and removed any impression of depth. So why not use this as inspiration for a new painting series?

“Blooms and Blossoms” – a new Blog and where can I find Inspiration?(8)

I admit I haven’t written much these days on my painterblog – simply because I am very busy with photographing at the moment besides my business tasks. So painting has become a bit short at the moment. I try to be outdoors as much as possible – not only necessary for my health but for taking the opportunity to photograph what I love most – blossoms and blooms.

They reflect colours for me – all colours, an abundance of colours so that all human senses are touched and in action. It is like painting colour fields in the head and I am sure some day I am going to do a series about this as well. But at the moment I do “research” as I call it. It is a kind of exercise for the mind and the eyes, to suck up all the hues and shades and tones and file them in the drawers of my brain – in order to be able to pull them out later, when necessary.

Other painters are painting colour charts – I am filing them through my eyes. The thousands of photos that I am collecting since a few years “need” some exposure – which means I would like to share them because some of them are really good – not always intentionally good – which I deliberately admit – but pure serendipities which I found out when I loaded them on the computer. At least I find them good or rather unusual and I love to look at them for myself. From time to time I take them for reference and new ideas and inspiration. So I started another blog just for photography of blooms and blossoms – not much text but photos to scroll through. I like the layouts of a blog much more than plain photo albums where you cannot include much text so this is a new one I am currently working on:

Blooms and Blossoms

So if you would like to see what I am busy with right now, please check the new blog – maybe you will like what you see. There are only photos, nothing philosophical, no discussions, just plain images besides the fact that I try to identify the plants for their botanical classification – you know – because I want to know…🙄

Evolving another Project from an Existing… (5)

While I am still working on my never ending website re-vamping which drives me nuts from time to time I have also started a kind of offspring project from the “Reminiscences” project that easily fits into the whole series but has nothing to do with the student village. So it works with inspiration…

Since I discovered a new love for old walls, windows and doors I started to look around in my nearer environment and discovered some more intriguing objects for my painting projects.

Funny – isn’t it, how sometimes one thing leads to another, totally by itself, without any effort, out of spontaneity? No intent behind it, only letting the creative juices do their own “thing”. I don’t have the slightest clue where this whole project will be leading me. This makes it so invigorating and exciting for me. Nothing really planned – leaving everything to serendipity and new thoughts.

Have not much to deliver to this blog for the moment as I am heavily involved in other things. So please be patient with me – there will be something new soon… (see following post from March 15).

Scavenging the Home Depot… (6)

This is a true place for inspirations – believe me!

Boy – yesterday I was really scavenging for several hours through our near by home depot in order to find the right material for the next painting. Is this crazy or not?

I had no idea what to use as a texture for the next painting – I only knew I would need some kind of pattern on it in order to create the effects I wanted to achieve. So I hoped to find something spontaneously. It is actually a good way to find some idea if you get stuck in your creativity flow or if you cannot make your mind. I always do this, I mean walking around somewhere in the woods or park and in this case in the home depot (really a magnificent source for creativity – you should try it if you haven’t thought about it yet) when I am not sure how to continue with my work. It always helps in one way or another. So I did.

First to the handicraft department – sometimes they have interesting things there and the creative juices begin to flow. But besides some sisal fibers I found nothing interesting for my actual painting. Then went through the paints, brush and glue department – hoped to find some extravagant thingie such as a special spatula with which you could achieve some interesting texture – no success. Everything was so ordinary – nothing exciting.

Then I snooped around the construction department – here you can find really interesting things sometimes such as nets, various metallic objects, all kinds of foils, structures etc. but this time to no avail. Nothing useful for my purpose.

Slowly I was getting really frustrated. So I finally rummaged through the plant and flower department hoping to find something interesting there and finally ended up in the zoo and aquarium section where I found some sand which I thought I could use. The grains were not too fine and not too course, had different sizes and would hopefully stick in some acrylic medium I planned to use.

Not a huge success after all this time but I had something I could work with. It was time to go home. My feet hurt terribly after all that walking back and forth, especially as I had been shopping with the bike before that – with temperatures around 25 °F. So was exhausted. After a short nap and a cup of tea I started to brush some acrylic medium on the prepared canvas, passed the sand through a sieve to get rid of the fine grains and spread out the sand on the wet parts of the canvas. After letting this to dry out I applied another layer of acrylic medium in order to make sure that the grains would really stick to the cloth.

Unfortunately I still haven’t got my digital camera back from repair so I can only present a detail scan of what it looks like currently:

 

 

Now back to work…

Where do you find Inspiration? (5)

… walking around and just looking at something that is in your neighbourhood. You might not have paid attention to it for some time, but suddenly you discover that the murals and interesting textures on the small bungalows of the Olympic Student Village in Munich might be something that spurs inspiration. So better keep track of them before they are torn down also in order to be renewed.

I took the chance of a sunny day – very rare in these days – and grabbed the camera to take some more images. I started to photograph the bungalows in August but did not have another chance to continue so far. I realized that some of the bungalows had been repainted although they are going to be torn down also. Some of the old ones had really interesting textures from the paint peeling off the wall – not to speak of the colours which are just lovely and remind you of other regions of this world – the Caribbean f.e. or Africa. Students which painted these little homes in the colours of their country – maybe a small consolation for being homesick. But check out for yourself:

Here is the “classical” black and red style reminding of well executed street-art

(click on the first image – you will find the complete photo docu on my website with much larger and better images!!)

and who would not feel wonderful in a house protected by some living trees?

The colours of Senegal – who brought those wonderful sun colours…?

and the coolest colours of the Caribbean islands…

Unfortunately I have learned that these adorable little houses are in a real desolate condition and in favour of economy and empty purses the city decided to tear them down rather than to renovate them. I only hope that the old charm is coming back again and that the new bungalows will be painted in such inspirational colours and creative motifs again. But I doubt it…

Btw – if you want to see more of these photos – check out my documentation on my website – Doomsday for the Olympic Student Village in Munich with much larger and better photos.