When you look at the details of a picture, you see how its illusion is created. The image above is a detail of one section of the flower bouquet. It zooms in on the flower patterns of the cloth that’s piled up against the vase of flowers. From this vantage, much of the expression of three dimensions is lost to sight. The shadows and the lights appear to exist on the same plane. In the detail, one realizes how much the third dimension of this particular drawing was created by the motif as a whole since without the whole motif we cannot see distinctions of figure and ground.
These “textile” flowers are as impressionistic as were the “real” flowers in the vase. Both are abstractions: shapes that appear in masses whose details consist of lines, hatchings and scribbles. So, for instance I began some of the flowers of the textile’s pattern as rough, smeared shapes…
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