Pulling Pieces Together

How pattern builds structure.

“Patterns can be as comforting as a solid rock in a turbulent sea.”

attributed to Ansel Adams

I think of pattern in art as a kind of warm blanket.

It’s the artist’s job to wrap that warm blanket around all the varied elements of a painting to hold them together in a cohesive whole.

Pattern builds the structure. It’s the result of organizing the elements of art such as line, colour, texture, according to the principles of design - repetition, movement, unity, variety and more. It’s the result that creates the whole.

Let’s look at the painting above. It’s simply an entire painting about pattern. There are several different patterns in this piece. First, there’s the shape pattern. This is the repetition of similar shapes. There’s the repeated round shape of the foliage along with the echoing shape of the somewhat round leaves on the table. The lettering is all the same rectangular shape while each letter is a little different within the shape. Then there’s the hyphen-like pattern at the top of the painting and just above the blue box. It’s a repeat pattern broken by its shift in direction and by its placement. And finally, there’s the repeating rectangular shapes - the green at the top, the dark blue, the table top and the table.

The next pattern is the value pattern. Dark against the light background at the top and the reverse of this at the bottom.

There’s a colour pattern as well. I used an analogous colour scheme of yellow, green and blue and repeated those colours throughout the painting. This helps to create harmony in the image.

And finally there’s a bit of a rhythmic pattern at the bottom of this piece with the random vertical lines working their way across the dark and light blue sections.

The monotype below is another example of rhythmic pattern. It’s a straightforward image of two different brush stroke shapes that remind me of musical notes randomly dancing across the paper. It shows how a simple pattern can carry some emotional weight, in this case, evoking a feeling of sound or of whimsy.

Take all these different elements of pattern, wrap them into a whole and you create a structure for the piece, a composition that is varied, interesting and invites the viewer to take time to enjoy.

As always, thanks for reading.

Until next time.

Cheers,

Bob