Art Theory
For Artists and Art Lovers
A Handbook
Across these pages are the musings of Bob Henry as he explored the world of art and painting over the span of 70 years. Many believe painting and thinking go well together. Others disagree. The truth is somewhere in between, and Bob hopes his words will truly enlighten others about the various sorts of thinking in the world.
The world of art is a world of multiplicity, and Bob has come to celebrate it all through the decades he has been mastering his craft. Even today, most people don’t regard visual thinking as ‘thinking,’ but he has found a much fuller truth.
“The push and pull” is achieved through, first the flattening of the space, and then by the rhythms of the forms in their apparent tendencies to look as if they are moving up or down, left or right, depending on the why this created by the artist and perceived by the viewer.
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I believe that the deep experience we may get when looking at a painting derive more from our reliving past experiences, rather than by experiencing what is directly before your eyes. So in some way, the subject of the painting can be, not the image that is pictured, but our feelings derived from our, probably unconscious, recall of our past experience.
I have started paintings by using a color that I have thought of as the “wrong” color with some success…