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Unplugged
"Unplugged" - Acrylic on Canvas - 100x140
cm
In our cellar room, which was equipped as a
gallery room, we showed
a friend our pictures.
"I would like to buy this picture of John
Lennon, if you do not want
to keep it - I have a good friend who is very
much Beatles-inspired.
I would like to give that to him ".
Unexpectedly one of my pictures was leaving me.
Since it was painted on paper, I still had to
frame it.
When he came again to pick up John, he looked at
all the walls
in passing and asked me if I had an abstract
image - really large
format and bright colors.
Maybe just like the way I painted John Lennon,
just brighter.
He could imagine something like that in his
office.
Now I had to fit, because abstract pictures were
actually not
the theme in my technically-meticulous world.
In the past, for me, abstract images were random
results, mess,
paint bags thrown on the canvas.
Until I took a closer look at the term
"abstract".
There is non-objective color smear, maybe messed
up with volcanic sand
or rust - sorry: refined.
But there are also figurative or constructed
abstract paintings
in which the artist accomplishes a mental
achievement.
Back to our art lover:
it made me suspect that this might have been an
assignment.
Did he really mean that I paint an abstract
picture for him?
Yes, he has: big, bright, abstract.
So I started to look at what a large-size
abstract image with
bright colors might look like.
Well, I'm not really the "belly
painter", who just starts to pick up
some colors and waits until something happens on
the canvas.
No - there doesn't happen anything here.
I think about putting bright colors on a canvas
whose arrangement
I might like.
A concept has to be done.
Top right is the brightest spot, bottom left the
darkest - so there
results a colored diagonal.
Then there is the rule of the golden ratio,
which sets the point
of greatest interest.
Finally, John came back to my mind.
The Beatles - Beatlemania, screeching girls,
psychedelic colors ...
A group of spectators in front of the stage, of
which in the glaring light
a band is playing.
Yes, that's how I imagine it: an audience, only
hinted at, not really visible.
In addition, a guitar, so that one can perhaps
explain a reason
for the lot of people.
But it's supposed to be abstract, so for
heaven's sake not a realistic
guitar but just something similar to an
instrument.
Now my idea was so concrete that I could not
help but buy a
large format canvas in the art market.
I just had to implement that !!!
I found a suitable screen series, chose the
biggest of them
and went to the cashier.
The cashier has known me for a long time - I am
a good customer.
"Load the screen into your car, I'm
preparing the bill now", she said
and I happily accepted her suggestion with the
unwieldy big screen
in my hand.
I put down the canvas onto my foot tips and
laboriously opened the
tailgate of the station wagon.
There is a meter of space between the wheel
arches and so I thought
that I could easily push the somewhat larger
format diagonally
into the car.
Wrong thought - after several futile attempts, I
had to give up.
In my plight I decided for the next smaller size
and went back into the store where already several customers were at the
cash register.
Quietly, I slipped past the people and tried to
make myself as small as possible behind the large-format canvas.
"Aaaah, the canvas did not fit - I thought
so already", it sounded aloud
from the cash register.
Everyone looked at me and I seldom have so many
wide grinning faces
seen at once.
"I put the canvas back on the shelf and
then buy a bigger car first,"
I called in the direction of the cash register.
As if spurred on, I dashed through the shop,
quickly away from the
cash register.
On the shelf, I searched
for a one meter wide screen and made the
second attempt.
This time I had luck with the canvas, after a
few minutes' drive the embarrassing feeling disappeared and I began to
look forward to the
new work.
I fixed the canvas to my easel and began to put
my idea on the protective film with marker and acrylic paint to get a
feeling for the composition,
then I looked at the picture from a distance.
Yes, that's how I imagine.
I took off the foil, made a rough sketch in
pencil and laid the big canvas
on the floor to paint it.
This was followed by a dance lasting several
hours around the canvas,
during which I set my basic theme.
At some point my wife came to see if I was still
alive.
"NO, that looks awful!"
"That's just beginning to develop - now
wait until I have painted my imagination".
She sat on a chair and watched my goings on.
With time, the image took shape and became
somehow more visible.
I had created now my basic concept with the
audience and the guitar
and found it a bit too realistic - too little
abstract.
So I decided to make a change of topic to
mitigate the impression.
I wanted to pull tree branches over the whole
picture and create
a further level of interpretation.
"I'll draw a branch in from the bottom
left," I said.
"Come on, then," was her comment.
I did - a broad black line.
"Now the whole picture is broken !!!"
"You could have said this earlier - now I
have painted a black line
across the picture, I will not get away so
easily".
Amazing how one can talk and think past each
other with different ideas.
In any case, I now painted my branches and
thought of Bob Ross, who
often painted a tree on his finished pictures
and then said
"now comes the bravery test".
After some time the ramifications were clearly
visible.
I used the guitar neck for a second tree.
It seemed to me to be in the forest - standing
between two trees
I look into the treetops - three-dimensional.
The picture had reached a new stage and I was
quite satisfied
with the result:
the bright colors make the first impression,
then you see the trees.
Huh, there are some faces that are visible on
closer inspection.
People with great imagination recognize that
Guitar instrument.
The audience of a guitar concert - without
perfect editing - unplugged.
It became an abstract picture with a dash of
realism.
I recorded the genesis with the video camera, it
can be seen as
a time-lapse video - an artwork as a by-product:
the creative process
as speed painting.
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