Thursday Post 1-22-09

Painterly

"Digital art software has empowered both the painterly side of photographers, and the photographer side of painters."
Buffy Sainte-Marie

Elliot, Virgil. "The Painterly Effect a Lesson by Virgil Elliot". The Modern Illusionists Advanced Classical Painting. Geocities. 21 Jan. 2009.

According to Virgil, painterly styles originated incidentally from sketches and studies that were used as aids to create more refined works, works that were not painterly. Franz Hals, though very capable of painting in a linear, refined style, often employed painterly techniques when doing faster "all prima" paintings of his more light-hearted subjects such as friends or interesting tavern-folk. John Singer helped popularize the painterly style. He would scrape away layers and paint over them until he achieved the effect he wanted. Fortunately he was able to render these works in a way that prevented them from appearing sloppy. Virgil suggests that every painter should master the full range of brush-stroke disguising abilities, so that they can use them with purpose.

I also found an article on "painterly" on Wikipedia. The following passages I found relates most to the work I want to do.

"Painterly" art makes strong coloristic use of the many visual effects produced by paint on canvas such as chromatic progression, warm and cool tones, chiaroscuro, complementary and contrasting colors, broken tones, broad brushstrokes, impressionism, and impasto. Jackson Pollock's action paintings of the 1940s and 1950s are more "painterly" than Frank Stella's Hard-edge paintings of the 1960s.

Finally, "painterly" refers to paint, though some forms of sculpture make such use of surface texture resembling brushstrokes that they could almost be called painterly (see Wood as a medium). The application of the term outside painting is a little self-conscious, and may not genuinely help the reader experience the character of Auguste Rodin's surfaces or Richard Strauss's flow of chromatic harmonies. Photography can also be described as painterly.

In my work, I want to use paint to bring unnatural color to the textured surfaces of nature. I may also use other methods of applying color, such as fabric, duct tape, or paper, but I'm going to start with paint, because I want to achieve a combination of painting, installation, and photography. As an artist I started as a painter, I've grown into a photographer, but though I often think in terms of installation, I have rarely ever worked in that fashion.