Symphonic Variations No. 5
I have been working on and dragging this painting around since about 1995, working on it here and there when I had time or a new element or color came to me. At times it was taken off of the stretcher and rolled up to move it or store it in a tube for a while. It has gone through a number of transformations over the years but after about 20 years I finally decided it was probably finished back around 2015. I guess it is finished because I have not worked on it since. This painting has still not been varnished, registered or given an inventory number. This is a personal painting where I have worked out my theories about visual musicality over the years to find a cohesive way to make what I call ‘symphonic paintings’. Symphony more or less means various sounds acting as one voice.
You would not believe how many hours over the years I have spent slowly contemplating the idea of symphonic painting and how to work out various ideas especially related to interweaving motifs that can be worked together to create harmonies and counterpoints to create new unexpected shapes, forms, spaces and colors but with a certain predictability of laws that govern the construction of the compositions. I have also been constantly creating new vocabulary, a kind dictionary of forms that can work well and that can express different types of ideas I hear in music.
It took a while to figure out for myself that I am not trying to interpret music into visual forms but rather to make visual forms that can work with the nature of seeing in the way that music works with hearing. And it is possible to study music and constructive concepts in musical composition that can inspire a visual way to reach a similar experience. But of course there are completely different sets of problems between composing music and composing paintings.
Typically I can work out the skeletal line drawing on the canvas in a spontaneous and fairly rapid way but the time consuming part is then working out the 1,000 other decisions about how to flesh out the forms and spaces and color and light and movement and how to direct the eye around the composition giving emphasis to one thing and then to another. All along the way I am working out the rational, the technique, the logic of it. It is very engaging to me.
The above drawing are all of the elements contained in Symphonic Variations #5: wavy lines, reverse zigzag, zigzag, arabesques, large curved lines, strait diagonal lines and overlapping oval lines and the repetition and interplay of these motifs . That is all.
After that it is a matter of shading and highlighting and coloring and then deciding how to move the focal point around the painting: what is in front, what is behind, what is opaque, what is translucent, what interacts with what, what dominates, what is subordinate or complimentary, enough quiet space counter-balanced with enough density. It can only be figured out in the making of it even though I have established many rules of how things are going to interact but it still involves thousands of decisions as it is designed and painted. Then your ideas evolve as you go along when you see new possibilities. This can change your decisions as you get new insights in the process.
So this kind of symphonic painting idea has always had to remain on the back burner in favor of the other works of art I make which move along much faster and have clearer beginnings, middles and ends. This other work, like collages and typographic abstraction paintings has always stayed on the front burner all these years. I do work out a lot of the musical theory in this other work and all of my work is deeply informed by the idea of visual musicality. But I would really like to spend a lot more time on this symphonic idea.
Like I have mentioned previously (below), in the winter, when I have completed all of the works I need for the galleries and all is well, I spend a few months every year working on the symphonic style works or works related to musicality in general trying to get to the point that this type of work can become fast moving enough and predictable enough to become a ‘settled style’ and part of my general body of work for public consumption.
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Workshop Coming Up
Next summer 2025 Les Jones of Contemporary Collage Magazine and I will be doing a one week workshop in London similar to the Collage Safari we did together in Brooklyn earlier this year.
If you are interested in joining us send Les a note at hello@contemporarycollagemagazine.com to be on the list and get the details.
Check out my instagram page: @ceciltouchon
Winter is Coming
Here is a little drawing I made this week while thinking more or less about the profile of a violin using a Cubist approach. I am using the lines of the profile as the motif for the drawing and throwing in some strait lines and curves in a contrapuntal way to increase the visual dynamic.
Time...motion....beats.....pulse.....movement..... it's all there in your magnificent painting! Bravo!!
I wish there was a more profound word for "WOW!!!" in the English language as when I scrolled down and saw the painting you did, I had an immediate reaction to it that went beyond "WOW!!!". It's so complex yet comes all together in an easy way to look at it, then look at it at a deeper level, and then deeper still at once seeing the magnificent details and the overall painting. I do wonder....do you listen to the music that originally inspired you to make those first sketch markings? Or/and? are you listening to it every time you work on it? You have to get it catalogued, varnished, and framed......it needs to be seen....that is unless it's only for your eyes only, but by golly geewhiz holy cow......it's a beauty and moves me very much.