Intersecting Color 1
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Angela Johal
Collage
"The longer you look at your subject, the more abstract it
becomes. When you look at a eucalyptus tree, you see a tree, but
if you look longer at its trunk, you will see luxurious subtle colors,
and an infinite variety of vertical abstract shapes. Abstract shapes
and forms are imbedded in everything you see. To view the world as
a child would, to escape from the traditional and naturalistic approaches,
from these pre-conceived iconic images and concepts, to forget the
things you learned in art school and to see all things 'new', these
glorious abstract shapes will emerge quite naturally.
"It is my goal as a painter not to depart from what is real, but
to unite this deep chasm that often exits between the real and the
abstract.
"My geometric series is non-representational and flat, yet in mixing
adjacent flat color planes, I have created an illusion of transparency,
making the shapes more real and three-dimensional.
"The vertical abstracts were inspired by patterns on tree bark,
water falls, horizontal landscapes turned vertically, so that the
paintings would have an intuitive reflection of nature within them.
"The river rocks are, perhaps, my most realistic series, yet they
also reveal an abstract, sculptural quality.
"The viewer is free to move in and out of space, to get lost in
the geometric angles and shapes and vivid colors of my geometric
series. They are very real, yet it isn't necessary to know that they
are close-ups of gemstones.
"I really wanted to paint flowers that weren't trite. Georgia
O'Keefe made people look at her flowers by making them 'big'. I decided
to cube mine randomly, to hold the viewer longer, so that they might
notice those amazing sensuous and abstract shapes within the flowers.
"The figurative works spring from my love for the post-impressionist's
use of strong outlines, vivid color, underlying order, and decorative
surface treatment. The figures are realistically painted, yet exist
in an imagined space.
"The mixed media series combines both painted images such as geometric
and tribal shapes, birds, flowers, grapes and eyes with multiple
layers of hand-cut, semi-transparent tissue paper to create a sense
of deepening space and light passing through.
"In the collage series I use mainly consumer products and images
such as paint swatches and barcodes. These works draw from pop culture,
consumerism and the sea of images and choices that tend to leave
one void. "Embrace them, infuse them with the natural world, re-arrange
and decode them, give them a soul." |
