A Tribute to Franz Kline

I’ve been suffering from a form of artist block for several years.  I have an abundance of ideas, but it is only with considerable effort that I can force myself to the art table and put brush to paper.  It is not too much effort to paint once I get going.  And finishing a painting proceeds at a good pace.

Unfortunately once completed, I will wait a month or three before forcing myself back to the table and another start.  The Internet is to blame to some extent.  Besides the e-mail and the regular websites I follow, I will revisit art sites and blogs from my bookmarks.  Sometimes this will kindle in me a desire to paint, but mostly it is a time waster.

Then I stumbled across a couple of images of some small abstract paintings that had been arranged in a grid.  Totally unbidden, the idea of “a tribute to Franz Kline” popped into my head. 

Let us get the record straight: I don’t like Franz Kline’s work.  I have looked over photographs of his work on images.google.com on several occasions, but I never took a shine to it.  Until my muse kicked this idea into me, I had never even read his bio or looked at his Wikipedia page.

It is without a shadow of doubt that I can state that creating this collage/paste up was effortless.  I quickly figured out the size that individual drawing needed to be and produced a stack of 18 cards.  It seemed to take no time to locate the first 6 or 8 images and produce my own interpretation of the originals. The next few took a little more time.  The last four were a bit labored, taking as 3 or 4 times a long produce.

I mounted them in the same order that I ‘created’ them.  Top left being the first and bottom right being the last.  On reflection, #5 and #6, second row from the top, left-most and the drawing adjacent to it, look to be of the same subject.  It’s possible as I didn’t reference any of the previous drawings when producing the next one.  Having said that, #2 and #16 do appear to have been created from the same reference image.  I guess I just was very impressed with the Franz Kline original.

Individual drawings are 6 ¾ by 4 ¾ on Saunders Waterford 200# C.P. mounted on a full sheet of Saunders Waterford Bright White 200# Rough.

Enjoy.

p.s. I’m almost finished with a second painting I started immediately after finished ‘A Tribute’.  It is early days, but perhaps my block has been overcome.