LOREN FRIESEN GALLERY

TAXIS:  artist's notes

SKU: 6​

Taxis is my most complex giclée composition–reworked, realigned, adjusted and refined over 12 years.

 

Near-to-far space is seen through a complex "framework" of lines and shapes that stretches across the picture from top to bottom and side to side. You the viewer are virtually in the picture, standing at the front edge on just this side of the near taxi.

 

This complex "framework" is made of vertical lines (the taxi's window post, driver's necktie, tree trunks, awning posts, stone monument, the long joints between wall panels on the far-left building, and blue banner, etc.) intersected by horizontal lines (bus-stop awning, red stripes on the busses, taxi roofs and window ledges, pedestrian railings, building windows, and window reflections on the near taxi roof, etc.). This loose "grid" is made dynamic by numerous diagonal lines (windshields, seat backs and head rests, seat belt, arm of taxi driver, tree branches, shadow on far-left wall, etc.), creating a mesh of angles strewn with myriad, small shapes.

 

Such a mesh of lines, shapes and colors spread across the surface of a picture is not an uncommon compositional technique in abstract paintings.

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"Repainting" certain areas of the picture (such as the head of the right, standing driver) was not easy. But the greatest challenge, like tuning a piano, was adjusting the space of the picture from front to back. Subtle adjustments in color saturation (intensity) or color value (dark and light) move an object forward or backward. In this complex composition, discerning which objects needed to move back and which needed to come forward was extremely difficult.

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Near the end of this process my son, a non-artist, helpfully observed: The right, standing taxi driver looks flat and in too shallow a space. He heard the picture talking–and I quickly realized that he was right! So I adjusted some of the color on the taxi driver to fix it. Unexpectedly, this brought a few other long-standing spacial problems into clear light. The solutions became obvious and relatively easy to execute.

 

Lesson? Or lessons? Ask another person if they see anything strange or out of place in your work. Then, if you see it too, fix it. If you don't see it, ignore the advice! Secondly, when facing a complex problem, don't get overwhelmed and bogged down, but just take the next step––and this may unlock following steps. This has helped me more than once in the process of making my art.​

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And listen to the picture. After the artist makes the picture, the picture talks back, and the artist needs to listen–because the picture tells the artist what still needs to be done. And in the end, it is the picture that gets the last word. Long after the artist (and the critic) are gone, the picture is still talking!