08/31/2022
When Paul Klee was about 35 years old, he journeyed to Tunisia with some fellow artists. He loved what he saw in the coasts, the towns and the countryside. He wrote about the impact of this trip in his journal. “Color possesses me.… It will possess me always, I know it. That is the meaning of this happy hour: color and I are one. I am a painter.”
I like Paul Klee’s work. To me his Red Balloon painting [Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York] is an example of the impact simple forms focused on color and proportion can have. You would probably recognize this painting from across a large room, just by its colors and proportion. When you look at this painting you don’t think “Wow that is the most realistic balloon I have ever seen.” There is something else going on here. Art reaches a part of our brain that is not assessable with words alone.
When I was five years old, I went to public school. At school we spent some time painting. The kind of thing I assume children still do these days. Our paints that day included orange and brown. Our theme included maple leaves. Maybe we had a few real leaves to trace or look at, I don’t remember clearly. What I do remember was the feeling I got from looking at my own work of orange and brown next to each other. I thought, wow this is beautiful I can’t believe how lucky I am to have created such a beautiful painting. It was like finding treasure. I was amazed at my own work. The feeling of that day has stayed with me my whole life. Again, it wasn’t the form of the painting that impressed me, it was the colors playing with each other. That was a happy day for me.
From time to time in my life I have asked friends “what kind of work would you do if you could do anything you wanted to?” I assumed that everyone would say, Oh I want to be a painter. So far no one has said that. It has taken me a long time to accept that not everyone loves colors as much as I do. And even people that love color may not want to be painters. And that’s OK, we are all different. Me, I have to be a painter, I don’t know why, I just have to. It’s been this way a long time.
When I paint the first step is color selection. I blend the colors myself. I usually have a few main colors with several variations. And maybe a surprise color. Just like when I was five years old, I am always looking for the treasure that comes from the perfect combination of colors. How well do they play together? Do these colors make me feel anything? It is important to get the colors right. If I don’t love them, I don’t think anyone else will. The style of painting I have developed uses my lathe and gives me a fixed form. That is, all circles. From this fixed form I can focus all my energy into the colors, their order and their proportions. If you like my paintings, then you must also be a lover of color.
I have developed two main styles in my painting. One I call focus and the other I call balance. In the focus paintings the background is simple. I have fewer colors and they are all at the same level. In these paintings I am looking for the ordered part of life. The happiness we are creating in our lives. I set aside the chaos part of life and focus on the good. Below (green and pink) is an example titled: Be Happy. February 2014.
In my balance paintings I have a complex background. Usually this background will be distressed, faded and chaotic. This chaos represents the messy nature of life and the difficulties that go along with it. The part of life that we can’t control. On another layer I have my circles. These represent order and the good things that can be found and made in our lives. Love, peace and happiness. So, balance is the tension between these two realities. We have power to influence our world but there are things we can’t control. Balance is the acceptance of these two realities. Below (red, yellow and blue) is an example titled: Portal. April 2017.
You may ask the question, Jim where did the lathe come from? In 2010 I bought a lathe to turn some wood creations. The shop photo below shows my lathe in 2014. The next photo (natural wood) is a bowl I called Pecan #2, 2011. The last photo below (colored wood) is of a totem creation I called Standing Spool, 2014. As you can see by 2014, I just couldn’t keep colors out of my woodwork. I started adding paint and dyes to my wood. Yes, the natural wood coloring was amazing, but I just love color. Then I asked the question, what if I combine my painting skills and my wood turning skills to create something new? The result of exploring that question is the artwork I offer in my gallery. Jim Bridges Fine Art - Gallery.
