#O78: Exercise – After Harris

My quest for deepening my understanding of color continues. In this exercise I chose a really colorful image by Canadian artist Lawren Harris in which pattern and color play a stronger role than realism. The original is shown side by side with my own version below (ouch!)

My version is on the left and Harris’s beautiful painting is on the right. In my defense I have to say I did not have cerulean blue, had to mix all my greens myself and worked on a small A4 canvas paper. I also set myself a limited time to do this – finished in less than an hour.

I am starting more and more to understand the importance of putting a note of color down and then leaving it alone. But bad habits are hard to break. Working in such vivid colors help me understand what can be done with strong, confident strokes of pure color in the right place.

Over the past few days I have been pouring over the work of the Canadian “Group of Seven” painters, and studying their work has really liberated my thinking about that I want to achieve with my art. I believe this has started to show in small ways in how I paint, but more importantly – how I feel while I paint.

A poem by the Chinese Nun Xinggang (1597-1654) at the end of a long weekend:

The Meditation Cushion
A single meditation cushion, 
and one is completely protected, 
Earth may crumble, heaven collapse— 
but here one is at peace. 

Sacred titles and worldly fame: 
both fade away in the sitting, 
And the universe assembles 
     on the tip of a feather.

adapted from Grant, Beata. 
Daughters of Emptiness: 
Poems of Chinese Buddhist Nuns (p. 74). 
Wisdom Publications.

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