Art: Levee Farms painting by Wayne Thiebaud, and my digital painting inspired by it
Here is a video of my favorite painting (as of now), "Levee Farms" by Wayne Thiebaud. I visited it four times during my few days in Washington, DC. In fact, I took a quick coding break from my Twilio app just to see the painting one last time, to take this video.
Ignore the audio of the video of the painting, please.
The second piece (static image) is a digital painting that I made, "Untitled," inspired by Thiebaud's painting.
In "Untitled," the building with the columns is the Smithsonian American Art Museum & National Portrait Gallery. That is the museum where Thiebaud's painting is currently on display.
Visiting art museums has taught me a lot about myself and some of the directions tha I hope to take with my art. I am trying to get away from design and its principles, and from illustration. I want to focus more on colors, patterns, and raw perception. I have been exploring synesthesia and optical illusions over the past couple of years, and I hope to take this even further.
The French artist Jean Dubuffet went from painting in the same style as his contemporaries to painting in a raw, primitive way. He was inspired by the mentally ill and by prisoners. I actually don't like his paintings at all, but I think his life is interesting.
You may have noticed that the museum building looks like computer graphics did in the 80s and 90s. The style is very different from the usual Web 2.0ish illustration that I've been doing.
Also, the colors of "Untitled" are more neon than you'd expect from me. That's because neon is color to its most extreme. I like pushing color to its limits, but I've been afraid of going this far because it clashes with current design trends. But I've realized that design and fine art are separate for a reason. My favorite pieces of fine art tend to be about exploring and pushing boundaries, where design is about working within constraints in a pleasing way.
This all comes full circle when you step back and see that Wayne Thiebaud is best known for his pop art paintings of cakes and sweets, done in a commercial advertising style. That is exactly the same direction that I've been taking with my orange illustrations for the past six years.
I really, really can't wait to get back to my art studio to paint with real paint! I'm pretty sure I'll have some new paintings to show very soon.
