From Instagram To Abstract Art Painting

Inca Path started as a project to make images that would fit fully in an Instagram post.

Square images fit best. Other sizes can be made to fit by cropping or reducing the image size and adding a square background.

A Square

Another Square

I had not made any square art pieces lately, well way lately. Nothing against squares.

I did make a square quote graphic for my instagram account. Did this prime my square art pump?

Once I started the project my art sonar took over, it was fun and different working in the square format and it was refreshing.

Squares feel stronger than rectangles. More solid.

Color Background

Working with a square got my something different engine gunning.

I have been working with earth colors lately so I chose a light lime green background. Lime sherbet comes to mind, so for the second piece orange was a natural color. The red border holds it all together via the red cut outs in each panel.

OK, that looked different. A change of color. What next?

Making Art Is Lot’s of Stuff at Once

In high school at Spring Woods in Houston I worked at a small manufacturing plant. One of my jobs was to take 3D letters, place it on a background card, then enclose them both on a machine that sealed them in a plastic bag.

When learning to do this at first I was slow, made mistakes and had to do some over again.

Later I got really fast. I mastered the process, knew exactly how to do each step and did not even have to think much about what I was doing.

I was the fastest and most productive. My mind put all the steps together into a routine.

Mastering anything builds a unified routine in your mind. Art is like this for me.

Color, shape, line, design, contrast and so forth are all merged together to make art that works for me and for you.

As I break the Inca Path story down into steps, keep in mind that many of the steps were taking place at the same time.

I Love Drawing

I made the black line all at once without lifting the pen off the paper. Taking a line for a walk as Paul Klee said.

In Peru Inca art surrounded me, at home, in museums and out and about. Now I can feel part of my love of line coming from Inca heritage.

My earliest memory, which my muse repeatedly displayed to me, was lines I drew while finger painting when I was 3 or 4.

My memory was of doing the fingerpainting and then stopping to stare at what I was doing.

Something about the lines caught my attention.

I reproduced the finger paintings as you see to the left but still did not get it until I enlarged the picture and saw how compelling the lines were.

I could feel a primal connection to what is built in in us all.

Making lines feels so physical, so connected to every part of me, which is one reason the black line is so prominent in Inca Path.

Line is part of me. Part of breathing. Part of moving. Part of seeing. Part of all of me.

Matisse Shapes

Matisse cut outs influence my work. I draw shapes in pen and ink, scan them into my computer and cut them out. Hand drawn shapes have me (and the artists and teachers that influence me) in them.

The computer is a tool I use to adjust colors, shapes and placement. A design tool.

I use various tools to do pen and ink ranging from sticks, steel nibs, refillable markers and throw away pens.

Some of the shapes you see in Inca Path come from Matisse’s cut out shapes. My cut out shape colors are not as bright as Matisse’s.

I am getting the itch to go make some prints now.

You can view some of my art on Fine Art America’s below pages

abstract canvas prints