Shaped Canvases = Open Images.

An Acrylic work on a round canvas – perfect for Cosmic artwork as there are no boundaries to the image – it is entirely open.  For the uninitiated – an Open Image is one where there are no visual or physical boundaries to block or frame the image, which can enter from any direction and to the viewer appear to continue beyond the confines of the canvas.  These can and are mostly created on rectangular and square canvases – often with the some image elements being cut off by the canvas edge.

“But your Asteroid Belt cuts off the bottom of the Image”, I hear you say.  Only to establish the positioning of the viewer within our Solar System – a comfortable place for them to see it all.  I carried the Milky Way beneath and out beyond the canvas’s top and bottom edges.  The Gas Giant planets are beyond the far side of the Asteroid Belt, stretching across space to the Ort Cloud at the outer rim of our Solar System.  So the image is still Open.

Of course the artist can add blocks or framing of their own to confine their image to the canvas plane.  Devices such as tall trees bordering the vertical edges of a rectangular or square canvas can be used contain the main subject matter neatly ‘in frame’.  These work very well, and are generally the accepted norm especially for figurative and realistic images.  Expressionist and Abstract works are freer in another way, yet are still created on rectangular and square canvases or boards – surprisingly conventional when you consider the subject matter.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

                        SALTPAN REFLECTIONS                               NEBULAE

I have always turned square canvases on the diamond – from the first one, SALTPAN REFLECTIONS, to one of my last, NEBULAE.  Almost always – a few rare exceptions when I realised that the image I was creating would actually work better on the square – but that was because I placed the image on with one result in mind only to ‘see’ something different in the work that I preferred to pursue, but which forced me to turn the canvas back to square to achieve it. (Excuse background of Nebulae – some paintings don’t get photographed on the wall and they are hard to crop on the diamond.  That is NO reason for not painting them that way though.)

                        SEALS AT PLAY                                         SHARKS  

Then I discovered someone who would make me shaped canvases – hexagonal, octagonal, pentagonal!  (Sadly he is no longer doing so.)  These led to an immediate ‘Port Hole Series’ of Underwater paintings –  Humpback Whales, Dolphins, Sealions, Rays, and Sharks which were like looking into different areas of the ocean through Port Holes of a submarine. Round and oval canvases came later, providing more opportunities for open images for the viewer to follow off the canvas into their imagination.

                          PINNACLES HAZE                                    ADRIFT IN SPACE

Be brave.  Don’t let your canvas/board shapes confine your artwork to the conventional.  Turn the canvas, cut the board, allow your imaginations to expand beyond your painting surface, carrying your created image with and beyond it also.  You may be surprised by the results both tangible and intangible.

Jud House  12/07/2016

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