I’ve spent the last 5 months recovering from open heart surgery. My art and design work have played a critical role in my recovery. When faced with life or death situations, there are a wide range of visual imagery that come to mind. Everything from empowering, light filled environments to dark, mysterious and menacing motifs. I made a conscious decision to follow the path that was most comforting and healing to me.
The first drawings and designs that I did during my recovery at home, were geometric and colorful. A neutral balance of shape and tone; not overly excited or rich in movement. A few of these designs are complete and are linked and embedded here. There are a roughly 6 of these designs that I feel confident in publishing here and should eventually add to the storefront.
The geometric “drawings” were a little more than digital coloring books that I made myself. In this case, they are based on tesselations that I found online. I added the tesselation pattern as a layer in my drawing and applied color one small shape at a time. This worked well as I was just a few weeks out of the surgery and my mobility was extremely limited. As I said, I did not finish them all right away as they are time consuming and very demanding in terms of focus and patience.
Eventually, I wanted to add some more emotion and colorful movement to my digital paintings. I started by painting behind the pattern layers, which was in essence, painting “blind”. I discovered that removing the pattern layers (which blocked my final painting) was a moment of sheer luck. A few of the paintings completed this way are examples of what I would strive for in abstract colorfield painting. Very satisfied with the results.
I was at this point, 4 weeks out from my surgery, that I dove into actual acrylic and watercolor work on paper.
Read about it in the next post.
Read about my physical recovery.
-Andy Holck