EveGriffinArtWork

I made this painting on the occasion of the partial solar eclipse in March 2007. The design of circles will be recognized by students of Northwest Coast art as an eye, rendered in the style usually associated with Kwakwaka’wakw and Haida work. I envisioned this eye like the sun, suspended over Lynn Canal at the edge of town.

 

The “vibrating” effect of the red and green is caused by the physiological impact of these two colors on the visual system of eye and brain: the red and green have a “negative/positive” relationship to each other in much the same way as a photographic negative and positive print. If you stare at a highly saturated red object, you will experience an afterimage of its “negative” color, bright green, when you look away. The trick to doing this with paint is to use the brightest, purest pigments and to make the two colors as equal in value (i.e.: degree of lightness or darkness) as possible.

 

This painting is also a study for a larger project. I have this crazy idea to make a series of bright, abstract paintings to be placed alongside a road like a series of old Burma-Shave signs.  The idea is that I would paint them like regular road signs meant to be visible at night in the light of headlights (whether the kind of headlight on a car or worn on a forehead), using reflective glass beads embedded in bright paint.  Originally, I had imagined posting these signs along Alaska Street here in Skagway in the deepest, darkest, most dreary part of winter when we all could use something bright to stare at.