Don’t Underestimate Stripes
Would you ever consider spending your entire painting career on just one theme?
I don’t think I would, but I know someone who has…Sean Scully.
He was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1945. He went to art school and traveled to Morocco, where he became fascinated by the multi-colored stripes the people wove into tents and robes.
It always fascinates me to hear when an artist is so impressed with something that he/she bases their work on it for many years.
Below is an image of one of his paintings.
Another artist I recently came across who also works a lot with stripes is Tim Bavington.
His work is very different from Scully’s but both focus on stripes.
When you think of painting stripes, you may think, “Aww, that’s not interesting enough, you can only do so much with them.”
NOT TRUE!!!
I challenge you to notice and observe when you’re out and about on your errands or traveling to look for stripe patterns, what they look like and how different they can be from one another.
And here’s another artist, Tegene Kunbi, whose striped paintings are beautiful.
So even though something might seem simple and easy, if you’re a painter, how can you make what might seem simple complex and interesting enough to make people take notice?
Oh, and here’s one more…Clay Johnson…
P.S. Don’t underestimate taking one genre and spending a long chapter of your art career discovering as many different ways of painting it as you can.
