More palette Talk.....

"My palette,newly set and brilliant with the contrasts of the colours, suffices to inflame my enthusiasm".
-Eugene Delacroix

During my last post I described a personal experiment with a palette arising from previously used Masonite panel to "imagineer" an intuitive image or response. The more that I thought about the exercise... the more I came to understand that as artists we are all searching for ideas and devices to extend both our knowledge of mediums, styles and subject matter.

As I visit different blogs that I enjoy, it becomes ever so obvious that we are all "restless" in a sense. I run across some who have "found" the Zorn palette... or the Singer Sargent palette... or in my own case a "split" palette suggested in John Carlson's classic "Guide to Landscape Painting". I continue to use that palette and rarely do I feel a need to change at this point in my journey. Others employ or experiment with limited palettes, or add in a new pigment such as black which seems the rage at present.

All of these devices are legitimate efforts towards gaining new knowledge and add new and necessary excitement to the painting process. It pays huge dividends to extend one's knowledge... or as I would offer... to "shuffle the deck". There is a trap however, if one simply "floats around" from one new venture to another without spending a significant enough time to really understand and develop an idea or approach further.

Success in finding one's own "style" comes from hard work using your own comfortable method... adding "dashes" of discovery into your own recipe... as "You" grow in confidence and capability. It takes time... and perseverance to develop... or discover one's own unique palette and style.It takes courage and conviction to "stay the course"!

My own exercise from the last post is not an isolated example of my trying to "think outside the box" in my own search and artistic method. Here are a couple more jpegs which illustrate a couple of more "ramblings"... and moments of "play" in my journey.

In closing... "I" would offer this anecdote regarding Pablo Picasso and his "discovery" of Cubism. I read an account which describes Picasso passing by a curio shop in the Montmartre... where he discovered some smallish wooden African carvings that excited him enough to purchase them, in order to study them in his studio. Out of that "discovery" Picasso shocked... then reshaped Modern Art with the creation of his iconic "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon".

"I" would offer this question. Who is the true "genius"? Picasso coming out of his Blue and Pink Periods... or some unknown "uneducated"... searching African artisan... from who-knows-where.... carving for what reason?

That is a reasonable question... that does not matter. It IS... that all artists build upon their own work, drawing from the vast treasury of ideas of those who are their contemporaries... or from those who preceded them.

Ramble on!... Search and discover! That is the primary joy received from a journey of painting!