Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Anchorage

Two years ago I started a painting (acrylic on canvas) that was to be dominated by the chroma white. Initially, I was inspired by the abstract paintings of Robert Ryman. Ryman is known to use an abundance of white. Rather than making an abstract painting, I wanted to paint a boat I called the "Arkadelphia" making its way to Anchorage, Alaska. My painting was to depicted extreme cold through extreme white.

As I started to paint, I quickly realized that what appeared to be white on the palette no longer looked white on the canvas. Any little bit of color mixed with white had a profoundly colorful effect when placed on my canvas and compared with other more pure whites. I found that my image began to suffer from two flaws: either I made it too white and the imagery became difficult to see or I added too much color and then it was no longer dominated by white paint.

Not knowing how to proceed, I left the painting alone for two years and this June, after what I consider a long detour, I began to work on it again. Forgetting about my original objective, I began painting portraits inside the boat. Later, as I worked I tried to make these portraits whiter and concentrate on cool colors (blues and greens).

After working on the painting for a couple of days, I arrived at a point of decision again. Rather than continue and obliterate the image with more white, instead I stopped. This is the point at which I dropped anchor and the painting remained still. This metaphor of "dropping anchor" became an apt description and I wondered if the city of Anchorage was founded in a similarly specific and arbitrary way. After finishing this not so white painting (see the image below), I wondered if I would ever successfully make a painting truly dominated by the color white. Perhaps this future painting will have to depict a scene in route to Antarctica.


Anchorage, by Kip Deeds, 25" x 26 1/2", Acrylic on Canvas, 2010

Friday, June 4, 2010

Crack Update

The cracks in my previous post (as seen in the photographs) are located on State Route 3003 near Laceyville PA.

Cracks In the Pavement

For the last two weeks I have been spending time in upstate Pennsylvania (about a 45 minute drive northwest of Scranton). Driving around this part of the state I have noticed and often tried to avoid patches of broken asphalt in the road. It seems dirt roads are less worrisome than these dreaded jagged piles of broken asphalt. Although I felt that the pictures of the ravaged roads were impressive just as images, I thought posting a few pictures might also highlight the need for road repair. I can't imagine what these roads would be like with a lower tax revenue. The following image was made while I was going for a walk.


The image below is a little further down the road.