The Space Between

Are you a foot tapper when listening to music?  I am, especially if there's a lively rhythm.  We create rhythm in paintings, too, and very much the same way as in music.

Our tendency is to think of visual rhythm being made by flowing lines, but intervals create rhythm likewise.  Whereas in music an interval is the time lapse between two notes, in painting it's the space between two edges.  Combine several intervals into a pattern and you've got rhythm.  The space between is as important to the rhythm as are the notes or the edges themselves.

Three kinds of spacing create a painting's intervals--the space between a shape’s edge and the outer edge, between any two shapes within the painting, and within a single shape itself.  When these spaces are too much alike, the painting can suffer, but unequal intervals will create an interesting rhythm.

Karin Jurick's "Lounge Act" uses all three of these visual intervals.

Karin Jurick        "Lounge Act"
Click on image for larger view

When setting up a painting's composition, there are two kinds of intervals that can get tricky, especially in a landscape:  one is how we divide the space between earth and sky; the other, how we space repeated images, especially verticals.

Joe Paquet's "Moonrise, Lake Carlos" beautifully illustrates a compelling earth/sky division.

Joseph Paquet     "Moonrise, Lake Carlos:   Oil

Notice three more smaller intervals within the short ones.

If Paquet had used an more equal division of space between earth and sky, the results would have been a bit on the mundane side.  That's the tricky part:  two often our brain's wanting to see things equally divided will interfere with our choosing a more interesting approach.

That tendency of the brain to space things equally requires the artist to be even more alert when dealing with repeated verticals such as tree trunks and fence posts.  In his painting, "First Greens," Colin Page has handled this problem adroitly by paying attention, not only to unequal spacing when he placed his tree trunks, but by how he tilted them as well.

Colin Page      "First Greens"      Oil

In this notan of Page's painting, notice the variation in size of the space between the tree trunks from bottom to top as well as the width of the trunks themselves--beautiful intervals throughout.

Notan of Page's "First Greens"

One other genre requiring special attention to intervals is the portrait.  Special awareness to the intervals between all parts of the image and the edge of the painting can be as important to a portrait as the interpretation itself.

Take a look at the intervals created by Albrect Durer and Pat Weaver.

"The Hare"  Albrecht Durer  16th century
"Woman in Hat"  Pat Weaver   21st century

I have converted each image into a reversed silhouette to make these shape/edges relationships easier to see. Focus just on the black space in each piece, looking first at the edge of the subject, then at its corresponding edge of the painting.

In each of these examples, it's the variation of the interval that keeps a composition convincing and entertaining.  Only if the intention is about repetition, such as the familiar chess board, does repeated intervals become a tool rather than a flaw in a composition.  Andy Warhol exploited repeated intervals in a number of his works.  Remember "Campbell Soup Cans"?

Andy Warhol     Campbell Soup Cans     1962

But good composing is not Campbell Soup, but then neither was Warhol's piece.

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Play It Again, Sam

What do these four designs all have in common?

We all know how unnerving it is to hear the same old tune over and over again.  But when a musician adds variations to that tune, something that had become irritating can be transformed into something delightful.  And the more clever the variations, the more likely we are to want to hear it again.  

The advantage music has over painting is that we are more likely to continue to listen than we are to continue to look.  If a painting doesn't capture our attention at first glace, chances are we'll look away from it, going onto something else.  Often the reason for its failure to engage us longer is its lack of variation. 

Have you found what the above designs all have in common?  Did you guess repetition?  If you did, you got it half right:  repetition with variation is the answer.

There are abundant repetitions in nature, but nature's repeated elements contain variations and the artist's ability to capture and express, even exploit, those variations is one way to hold a viewer's attention.  

Carolyn Anderson          Oil

Color samples from the light values of Anderson's painting

In the above painting, Carolyn Anderson repeats the same color family throughout a large part of the painting, but within that color, the way she finds to vary their hue, intensity and value keeps us interested.  In addition, she varies the direction of her brushstrokes, the degree of blending, and the edges of the shapes. 

Look at the variations in color Kevin MacPherson has put into the sky and water of "Shem Creek Afternoon."

   MacPherson   "Shem Creek Afternoon"    12" x 16"   Oil

Color samples from MacPherson's sky

Color samples from MacPherson's water

In both sky and water, there are repetitions that could be translated into ho-hum interpretations, but MacPherson has looked more closely and found differences that keep these areas compelling.  And on closer observation we can see that he's repeated the kind of stroke he uses for the water while varying it's width, length and occasionally its direction.

But possibilities extend further than nature.  Even though the color of human flesh is repeated throughout one's face, Carol Marine has discovered at least six variations in color just on the light side of this humorous portrait.

"One-eyed Don"    Oil   Carol Marine
with samples from the right side of the face.

By varying the size and direction of her strokes as well as the colors, Carol has made an otherwise common subject exciting and fun to look at.  

Repetition is the composition principle that produces rhythm and can give unity to a work, whether music or any of the other arts.  But too much repetition without some variation can render boredom.  Nobody wants their work to be boring.  Do they?