Paint by Nature: Abstract Animals

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Abstract Animals

At Coggeshell Farm in Rhode Island, a working 1800's era farm, I found these animals in their fabulous environs in such different light conditions. I really enjoyed the way they broke up into abstract shapes and forms in this painting process.

Cow in misty field

Sow in pig heaven

Ewe and Lamb in shadows of the barn

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About this blog

This blog is a sharing of the amalgam of two art loves and passions I have had my whole life. One is a deep love of all things in the arts and crafts movement and the other is a childhood love of Paint By Number paintings. You may ask "what do these two things have to do with one another?" Well both have come together in the several hundred digital paintings I have been doing for a number of years now in a way that has informed all the other paintings and art that I have been doing professionally.

Paint by Numbers:

My lifelong love of paint by numbers has Not been for the ease of painting that young kids and beginner painters love them for. It is because of the wonderful abstract shapes created when you look more closely at the hard edged colors in the pattern. For me, paint by number paintings also began to suggest a different way of looking at color and how the eye perceives shapes and tone. When an image gets broken down into hard shapes and non-blended colors, tones that are unexpected begin to appear in spaces between edges and changes in value.

Art and Crafts:

I have been in a long love affair with the aesthetic and Esthetic of Arts and Crafts. The simple and powerful lines, the love of nature and its influence on us and most especially, the art and paintings found during that period.

Digital art exploration:

Several years ago I began taking photographs of some of my favorite places in nature and running them through a whole series of photoshop filters and processes to force color zones. I then would paint back into them eliminating and reinforcing certain colors and shapes and excavating what I felt about the image. In some cases I would change the composition radically and in others I would find and chase gestures already suggested by nature.

The results are posted throughout this blog. I hope you find the results as informative and interesting as I have. After painting several hundred studies (that I'm posting over time in this blog) it has changed some of the way I do my traditional paintings and other illustrations.

It has also challenged my notions of the line between photography and painting. This process moves freely between them and asks the camera to bring the raw shapes of nature into a digital painter's environment to be manipulated, enhanced, quieted, painted over and moved about. Ultimately, these images are meant to express what I love to feel and see in them and not what is or was actually there.

My home is full of Arts and Crafts furniture and items and Prints of these paintings are fitting throughout remarkably well.

I post hi resolution images so that you can really see the detail and shapes. Go ahead and click on the images and click again to zoom right in.

Cheers, Kevin Mowrer

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Sunday, February 26, 2012

Abstract Animals

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