What to Leave in and What to Leave Out

I asked my honey, who is currently busy on this Father's Day, smoking our dinner for later, what I should write about, since I am sitting here on a beautiful day enjoying our back deck.

He suggested writing about aspects of my processes in my art. One such process is deciding on the painting I would like to complete and the subsequent composition of it.

In my painting of the Great Gray Owl, he is the focal point. The background was muted and this gave him depth. I am learning that I need to determine my focal point(s), making that focal point brighter in the more complicated landscape paintings.

Does it come down to making sure the references are simpler? Mother Nature isn’t that simple. I see so much detail in the photographs that I take, I struggle with "what to leave in and what to leave out" and what to change. I want to take my viewers to the place, immerse them into the subject...before those subjects are gone. As with everything we evolve and it is no longer as critical for me to provide everything in high detail. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE painting the details in ALL of the subjects!

As science has shown there are many ways to take in the world and feed it to the brain. Sometimes the amount of detail can be too much for the brain to take in, especially if a person isn't used to studying the subject. It is a quick few seconds and we move on. No two brains are the same, nor is the information we take in or how we process it.

Abstract paintings boggle my husband's mind because he is trying to figure it out and make sense of them. Me, I am in awe of abstract artists. I know lots of thought and work go into the message they might want to convey. Some paintings are meant to be soothing, some are loose representations of a topic, while others can just be the colour combinations or the love of patterns and shapes.

In the attached 5"x7" painting, titled "Lazy River"

is a representation of a place in BC - and my focal point is the light coloured hill. Some of the smaller "detail" will take you around the painting to see other aspects, but the focal point is the hill. I left out a lot of detail, but I think it represents what I saw on that sunny day.