There’s always an impulse, some initial thought that triggers the beginning of a painting. Often it is a design element, particularly texture or motion. Sometimes that initial idea is an experiment or a question.
For many years I’ve investigated ways of making marks with paint. Working through different media I built up a repertoire from exploring color, creating textures, capturing a range of motion and composing images.
This history of nonobjective painting has contributed to a recent series of more representational water views. When I paint images of water I draw on that repertoire developed from nonobjective painting.
A previous compositional goal for my nonobjective work was to create a complex, balanced composition that would contain design elements of contrasting qualities such as dark/light, smooth/rough, opaque/transparent. I would build many contrasting qualities into a work, sometimes limiting palette. In recent years some of my art has been more of a continuous field of color, line and pattern, still incorporating contrasting qualities and a focus on texture and motion.
My style is spontaneous; I develop and refine the composition without a preplanned final image. It’s an absorbing process, working through a series of ideas until I have an innate sense of completion. The final image is always a surprise. It is an intuitive, dynamic experience, very satisfying and often exciting.
A painting’s title often articulates the impulse that started the work. This helps me keep track of the ideas and hopefully makes the art more accessible to the viewer.
The Ocean Series
My first beach experience and view of seemingly endless water came from childhood visits to Hamlin Beach on Lake Ontario. College life took me to Long Island where I was first awe-struck by the power and beauty of the ocean. Since college I’ve visited beaches in California, Maine, Rhode Island, Delaware, Massachusetts and Florida. Being seaside continues to have a deep impact on me and that impact is driving the Ocean Series paintings.
In 2004 I started painting water views beginning with 4” x 6” seascapes. The series evolved into in-depth explorations of single aspects of a seascape. They became larger, as big as 12” x 16” and more abstract. In a sense it is like looking through a telescope; the paintings are larger but represent a smaller detail of a seascape.
I ‘m struck by the differences between the ocean and the Gulf of Mexico, remarkable and memorable differences of movement and color. The ocean’s waves are bigger, crashing swells. The ocean is grayer and bluer, the sand darker. The Gulf is greener; its waves are often gentler swells. Northwest Florida’s coast has miles of wide beaches of white silica sand that set off the color of the water.
The water is always changing and looking at the water changes me. Its dynamic beauty can be overwhelming, calming or stimulating. The perpetually changing light, color and motion is arresting and mesmerizing.
When painting on location I focus on observations of color, light, texture and motion of the water. Each seaside visit yields a visual diary of sea and sky changes. When painting in my studio I revisit the ocean in my mind and interpret it somehow on paper. These paintings are in part captured memories reconnecting me to the experience of being there. The result is a series of paintings ranging from representational to abstract.
I feel drawn to the ocean and yearn to be before its immense natural beauty that changes throughout the day as well as day-to-day. Seaside visits and their enduring visual memories are so potent that I’m still finding more ways of painting views of the water.
Kathryn Gaspar Going, April 2006