Global Rules

This painting was done with the Calypso Moon Art Movement March Challenge in mind.  This month's theme was collecting and the challenge was to take two things you collect and do a painting.  This was a little perplexing, as ALL of my paintings are about the things, especially vintage pottery, that I actively collect or other objects that have special meaning or just wonderful shapes and colors.  As I have a strong series going with my pottery pieces, I decided to focus on other collections.  The 50 or more plastic swizzle sticks that my father collected on business trips to New York and Chicago in the 50's had possibilities.  My embarrassingly large number of yard sticks and other tools that measure things also got a good looking at.  Then there are the globes, some of which I've done work with before.  After over a hundred photos in bright morning sun on my studio table, I decided on the globes and yardsticks.  May do another with the Swizzle Sticks and Yard Sticks...nice play on words and a very linear focus.

Looking at the many photos, I decided to risk violating the rule of the challenge.  There were to be only two objects...or you could, with one eye closed and the other squinting, read it as just two collections.  Since I think a lot about collections and make compositions using stuff like this, I think that to thoroughly communicate the idea of a collection rather than just illustrate items you have, there needs to be at least three of a kind in the mix.  (2 is a pair, 3 is a collection)  I also think that, though it is certainly possible to do so, a composition with only two objects does not have nearly the power and movement of three or other odd numbers of items.  Old flower arranging guideline and general rule of design that I generally accept.  I haven't tried negative numbers, could be a concept!

So this is what I came up with.  I'm pretty pleased with the strength of the color and the 3 dimensional quality of the composition.  After the first stage shown below, I nearly scrapped it.  Too linear, composition not clear.  Pushing the colors to a greater intensity in the lower and central areas and decreasing them in the upper left helped to get the focus and eye movement into a better relationship.

This is only a few of my yardsticks!!!  I like ones with good color, interesting typefaces and ad info. I have a few very unusual ones, the rest are just remnants of paint stores and county fairs of yesteryear.  My globes hang out all over the house, some of them on a high shelf in the open beamed  livingroom.  The little gold one was a gift I gave my daughter.  Its from Russia as a commemoration of the Sputnik launch...the little wire and rocket describe the trajectory out of Siberia!  (Daughter had interests in astronautical engineering at one point but has settled in Geography and Russian Studies.  She can read the inscription.  I can't!!)