Arctic Sunrise

(c) Carol Stevens      20 x 30"   mixed water media

After a 1993 workshop with Gerald Brommer I continued to be interested in collage

with "rice" papers, staining, tearing, layering them.  Ultimately this

piece became  a 20 x30 example of beautiful colors and textures.  Every square

inch of it was just luscious and so much fun to just layer more and more.

With each new addition of blues, greens, violet papers, I believed it would become

the complete painting I was looking for, but no!  Something was still missing.

So I added more papers.  The colors and textures became more complex, varied

and beautiful all the way to the corners.  Time passed and I kept looking and adding.

The realization came over time that I needed to subtract some of that gorgeous surface. I had created to many beautiful areas of texture and color all over. There are seven art elements and I was using only  two of them, color and texture.  Missing were line, shape, value, direction and size.  These missing elements were needed to make a completed thoughtful painting instead of just that beautifully decorated paper.  I had to, painfully, hide some of those luscious areas with a light tint of opaque paint to create shapes and value.  Lines were added for direction. The negative shapes were varied in size.  Consideration of all the elements is needed to make a unified statement, a painting! 1999