From the Artist: My submission for this painting project is done on timber (the lid off an old wooden box). It’s about homeless people, who are often invisible to everyone else. This is what I wanted to express with this painting. It's not a happy subject but I absolutely loved doing this one. I read the instructions and read 'urban scene' so I hope this qualifies as it couldn't really be called a landscape.
From the Painting Guide: The most important thing about this project for me is the concept of abstraction, to encourage people to move away from feeling compelled to include everything in a scene in one painting in a realistic style. So often a painting with less "in it" has a stronger impact on a viewer as we're left to interpret and figure out aspects of it, rather than it telling us everything up front.
I think that's the case with your painting, where the setting is clearly a street corner. The cool blues of the pavement to the right creates a sense of uneasiness, contrasting with the sense of heat radiating from the front wall and pavement. Both have a fabulous sense of graffiti-, poster-, and dirt-covered, neglected inner-city wall.
I find myself wondering if that's stairs at the end or a metal shutter on a store front, so I'm pulled into the painting as I consider the possibilities. The way the figure is painted gives a sense of mystery: is it an actual figure, a shadow, the sense of a person who once sat there but who's disappeared? It's not a "nice painting", nor a "pretty painting", but I think you should be very pleased with it for the sense of location and the emotion it evokes.
Read what other people have thought about this painting, and add your own thoughts, in the Painting Forum discussion about it.
From the Painting Guide: The most important thing about this project for me is the concept of abstraction, to encourage people to move away from feeling compelled to include everything in a scene in one painting in a realistic style. So often a painting with less "in it" has a stronger impact on a viewer as we're left to interpret and figure out aspects of it, rather than it telling us everything up front.
I think that's the case with your painting, where the setting is clearly a street corner. The cool blues of the pavement to the right creates a sense of uneasiness, contrasting with the sense of heat radiating from the front wall and pavement. Both have a fabulous sense of graffiti-, poster-, and dirt-covered, neglected inner-city wall.
I find myself wondering if that's stairs at the end or a metal shutter on a store front, so I'm pulled into the painting as I consider the possibilities. The way the figure is painted gives a sense of mystery: is it an actual figure, a shadow, the sense of a person who once sat there but who's disappeared? It's not a "nice painting", nor a "pretty painting", but I think you should be very pleased with it for the sense of location and the emotion it evokes.
Read what other people have thought about this painting, and add your own thoughts, in the Painting Forum discussion about it.