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acrylic blog Studio

Veteran’s Day Art Competition 2009

I found this from my Junior year of high school in 2009, was blessed to be the winner of this ‘Southlake Carroll Veteran’s Day Art Competition”

“Pledge to Lady Liberty” \\ 16 x 20 – acrylic on canvas, 2009

I was obliged to give a speech at the award ceremony during the ‘Veteran’s Day’ pep rally. I saluted and walked off the stage since I knew they would rather see the picture than hear me talking about it. Sometimes the frame can bring out a mood or more profound statement by monumentalizing the picture plane. I always have been drawn to the play of middle red and blue, like the colors of 3d glasses.

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Art Criticism Art/Design Design Home Studio Studio

Axial movements in Guido Reni’s Baroque masterpiece, “Aurora”

L’Aurora (The Aurora) is a large Baroque ceiling fresco painted in 1614 by Guido Reni for the Casino, or garden house adjacent to the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, in Rome. I created this gif to illustrate better the geometric structure underlining Reni’s beautiful sweeping forms of gods, goddesses and angels in the glorious gold-filled dawn.

The Baroque was known for dynamic movement and triangle compositions that seemed larger than life yet replaced the idealism of the renaissance with something more akin to the drama of an opera (which also became hugely popular around the same time in the 17th century). Below is another of my favorite Reni paintings, Susanna and the Elders (1620-25). The Susanna painting also uses a fantastic composition with powerful axial movements galore.

Susanna and the Elders, Guido Reni / 1620-25

When I was in art school at Pratt, we had several assignments requiring us to select an Old Master painting to break down axially. Any significant curve, line, or other shapes that define the big moves of colors or a figure in the image can be broken down this way. Our professor had us take tracing paper and draw out the significant axial movements with different colored pens or markers directly over a printout of the original painting. These exercises helped me to understand the deeper essence of composition and our class looked at Baroque paintings in particular for their use of balancing diagonals with triangles for a dynamic yet balanced and compositionally strong image. I still make these from masterworks for inspiration and historical allusions in my artwork.