Archive for the ‘Abstract and Just Plain Weird’ Category
Ouroboros
Monday, May 24th, 2010
Ouroboros by Amy Crook
The touches of copper paint glow brightly in the photograph, as though the camera picked up the particles of shimmery metal in the paint.
Ouroboros was painted as another experiment, and is one of the abstracts I’m the most pleased with. The copper swirl of the snakes eating tails concludes with one escaping the endless spiral. The rough white shape on its periwinkle background calls to my mind a giant wing against a twilit sky, Quetzalcoatl overseeing his little cousins perhaps. The metallic paint highlights here and there throughout the painting in subtle and unsubtle ways to add dimension that goes well with the textured brush strokes.
Ouroboros, 16″x20″ oil on canvas.
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird
Tags: copper, for sale, oil painting, ouroboros, snake
Untitled Experiment 1
Monday, May 17th, 2010
Untitled Experiment 1 by Amy Crook
I painted this a few years back when I was experimenting with a lot of different styles. In this one there’s a lot of visual texture, as well as a bit of gloss in the periwinkle rectangle from the painting medium that also gave it its transparency. People have asked me what it’s supposed to be or mean, and I have to admit that I just liked the way it looks. I like that something as simple as four overlapping rectangles gets a lot of complexity from little brush strokes, variations in color and opacity and even the softness of the edges.
This piece isn’t edge-finished yet, but I plan to paint over the white edges & staples with black so it could be hung without a frame. Well, I hang it without a frame anyway, but I’m special like that.
Untitled Experiment 1, 18″x24″ oil on canvas.
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, Daily Art
Tags: for sale, gold, green, lilac, oil painting
Darklight
Wednesday, May 12th, 2010
Darklight by Amy Crook
This is an old piece that’s gone through a number of permutations. This version feels very much like a cave to me, with light coming in from above, and textured stalagmites growing up from the bottom to meet with the stalactites reaching down from the top. The painting is as much textural as visual, with very little of the canvas peeking through all the thick paint.
The edges have been painted black, so it’s ready to hang without a frame.
Darklight, 18″x24″ oil & gesso on canvas.
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird
Tags: for sale, grey, oil painting, texture
Key to My Heart
Monday, May 3rd, 2010
Key to My Heart, detail, by Amy Crook
It’s been a long time since I had a chance to cast in bronze, but I still have a few pieces left. In this one, a small, abstracted figure stands on a strange landscape of texture and shape, with a small keyhole in the center of his chest.
The entire sculpture is actually quite small — the figure is a bare 2″ tall, and his unusual landscape is 5″x7″ at its widest points, and 3″ tall where it curls up behind him.
Key to My Heart by Amy Crook
Key to My Heart by Amy Crook
I left on most of the random textures created by the casting process, and in fact the cavity from which the piece gets its name was created by the shrinking of metal away from the sprue at the point of contact. The hollow made such a perfect keyhole shape that I decided to keep it rather than filling it in.
Key to My Heart by Amy Crook
Key to My Heart by Amy Crook
The colors were created with a combination of chemical patina that was heated with a blow torch until it bonded with the metal, and the passage of time and the oils from being held by human hands. It will continue to evolve as the piece is exposed to handling and the environment, the browns growing richer and the patterns changing subtly.
Key to My Heart, 3″x5″x7″ cast bronze.
Categories: Abstract and Just Plain Weird, People, Figures and Faces, Whimsical and Strange
Tags: bronze, for sale, key, sculpture
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