Summertime Turning Point

This piece that I did last summer, was a pivotal piece for me as an artist. It was the beginning of what felt like somewhat of a breakthrough for me artistically. It was what I was hoping would happen as I created so many pieces over the course of one year. Here’s what began to change from around this time on… I started to play with “negative space” a whole lot more. “Negative space” is an artistic term that refers to the space on a painting or other work of art that you don’t look at.For instance, if I painting a picture of a chair on a white background, the first thing you notice is the chair—that’s the “positive space”. The negative space is the shape and form the white takes on around it. Negative space is an important thing to pay attention to as an artist, and to think about. So, at this point in the year last year, I really began to create more and more elements in my illustrations that didn’t have distinct borders… The eye had to creat the borders instead. For example, look at the trees in this piece. They really are just a repeated series of a V-shaped green lines. Stacked on top of one another, the eye knows they are a tree. Between each line is white space… continuous white space. Only the green “positive space” helps define the white “negative space” as part of the tree.

Anyways, I really began to challenge myself last summer. I wanted the work to become more modern. More abstract in a way. And so it was an exciting time for me artistically. I’ve been missing, to some degree, the challenge of creating daily. I think about it a lot actually. I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a bit more of it. It was so freeing as an artist. I don’t know… we’ll see what happens….

I’m thinking about tomorrow’s newly created piece… and I’m going to let today’s “freebie” influence tomorrow’s…. at least I think! You shall soon enough see! I have yet to see too… not even a sketch done yet! Still toying with ideas…

I love art. This is so much fun. Thanks for appreciating all of this with me! I’m so glad I have you all along. There’s this need, as an artist, where you want to know people who “get” this art thing with you. Even if they don’t fully “get” it (who does?), it’s great to know its mutually appreciated! Thanks for loving art!

xox,
Katie