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      Recently a few questions have come in via email about composition and my approach to it, so in this blog I'm attempting to clarify what it is I'm talking about when I refer to composition or design. While there are a number of classical design concepts and theories relating to proportions, value patterns, golden ratio, etc., that are undoubtedly useful in the planning stages of a painting, many are focused on a monochrome image and don't take color into consideration. It should be noted that at one time, far fewer colors were available to artists,  reproductions were only in black and white, and before that paintings were often completed in gray values with the color glazed on later. Maybe we have the Impressionists to blame for throwing anarchy into the mix? 

     While it's not exactly the easy path, I see no reason to not embrace the best of whatever is out there. The way I think of composition using a direct painting approach, the term encompasses all of the decisions that go on throughout the entire painting process. In this sense, I would argue composition is inextricably connected to the artist's technique, and what would be sound compositional principles for a more classically influenced painter might not necessarily work in the same way for an artist using broken color, for example. I have fairly eclectic tastes in the art I find inspiring, and to illustrate what I'm talking about I'll bring up a couple of very divergent images as a way of comparison. This first piece is The Lustre Bowl with Green Peas by Sir William Nicholson.

The strong value patterns and elegant simplicity in this arrangement are very compelling. Use of color is spare, yet obviously carefully considered and well balanced. Contrast the solid value patterns above to the quirky and dynamic energy of the composition below. At the Harwood Museum here in Taos this past week I was able to study this painting by Nicolai Fechin. While I can recognize a few overlapping design principles, I would say the divergences are more obvious than the similarities. The techniques are very different and in turn the compositions are very different. 

In the Fechin painting there are several more colors to balance, but because of the techniques he uses, there are also a lot more options for balancing them. Looking at this painting up close I could spot many hints of red underneath some of the scumbled strokes of the sunflowers. Without being really obvious to the casual viewer, this was one way of adding to the harmony and balance.

Both artists are so brilliant that I suspect they could have swapped arrangements and still have come up with something wonderful, but yet I can't quite picture what that would look like. 

To me, composition is defined as whatever it is that makes the painting work. It's that simple and that complex. There are roughly a bazillion decisions that go into every painting. Each note, and every touch of the brush can be lighter, darker, more chromatic, less chromatic, thicker, thinner, transparent , opaque.... on and on. And every choice has the potential to affect the balance , the harmony, and the relationships of the objects to one another. These decisions all come under the umbrella of composition, and having a clear mental image of the direction you want the painting to go definitely makes the multitude of choices a lot easier. Taking a broad definition of the term doesn't at all mean I don't take into consideration the basic abstract structure of an arrangement, but it is fair to say that I have a somewhat looser approach to some of the rules and they are more like guiding principles rather than something never to be broken. I've found a lot of things that help, but a one-size-fits-all solution to mapping out a successful painting hasn't turned up yet.  In summary, my sense of what constitutes a good composition has evolved over time, along with everything else in my work. Hopefully what has come out of it is an intuitive feel for the tension and balance that is unique to each arrangement.