This is a followup from yesterday’s attempt to portray the space I felt, and still feel today when I see the trees back east during the time of late fall and the onset of winter, when there are no leaves. I encountered this space when I used to visit Michael, my older autistic brother.

I have this inkling of what I want to present. All I can see in my mind’s eye is a kind of lightning bolt cracking space.

Today’s experiment:

First study –

I started today’s watercolor by painting blue squarish shapes. I wanted to cleave those shapes with jagged lines of contrasting color. I painted orange shapes to complement the blue.

I left an orange lightning bolt isolated on the left side of the paper.  I planned that the solid shapes and their complementary jagged outlines should interact. Looking at the central portion of the composition, I can almost see a spatial effect.

I thought that the addition of a different set of complementary colors, the purple and the yellow would supply additional tension, through what Hofmann calls push and pull. However I was disappointed with the overall effect.

Second study –

I found that a closer approximate to the image in my mind’s eye was accomplished by using black paper with lighter colors in the foreground. I used acrylic colors.

The idea of ‘cracking’ comes through with the yellow lightning-bolty lines. However, again, the idea of space does not come through unless one views the yellow lines as disappearing to a vanishing point on the horizon. the collection of white lines convey the idea of stark winter trees at the side of a road (at least to me).

It might be that the idea of portrayal of space is not accessible to me at this point. All I can do is to keep experimenting.