Month 2 - Dark/Light Pattern and the Denver School

Monday was our last day working on our abstraction painting but the lecture was on dark/light pattern. Kevin talked about how to "marry" the mediums either to the light group or the dark group so that the mediums would not read as a separate group. It must be obvious that the overall painting reads as dark and light but not necessarily black and white. He gave the example of Egon Schiele's Sunflower.

Even though the medium color group is obviously a medium (the ochers) it marries to the dark. The balance of the composition is beautiful and creates and interesting pattern. Keep in mind the movement withing the patterns. For this movement he showed a black and white of Kathe Kollwitz. This is not the image Kevin talked about but it is the closest I could find. You can see how the pattern repeats from the floor, to the bench to the table to the wall to the ceiling. The pattern moves the eye through the composition in an amazing way.

As a side note, Kevin talked about how the Master Painting and Advanced Master Painting classes and the resulting artists in the Denver area who have taken the class either with Kevin or Quang Ho are now talked about as the "Denver School" in other parts of the country. That the quality of work produced here is being noticed! How cool is that?