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Closing out 2016 and starting 2017 are two paintings of exactly the same night scene, Market Street in San Francisco observed from above the Castro on Twin Peaks. The two works, of different size, have different approaches, different emotional emphases. The small square is The Great Divide; this should not be confused with Divisidero Street, which once was the limit of the Presidio. The larger work is The Living Night, the welcoming, vibrant aspects of the city that extend into the evening. While based on a photograph, the color palette is altered to emphasize a living, vibrant, holistic city-organism. Night hides the flaws and dreariness of a city, and although it also obscures the joys of architectural detail, the nightscape takes on the magic of a bioluminescent landscape. (The color balance and tone do not reflect the actual painting; the sky, for example, is far darker.)

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Path of Serenity is admittedly a Buddhist painting. The nighttime street scene is the Itaewon entertainment district of Seoul, Korea. I replaced the crowd with two Korean Zen monks, one striking a moktok wooden percussion instrument. The contrast of the gray-clad monks of one technique with the busy, flat geometric, multiple neon-lit street is obvious, but it does represent the meditative state of mind. I practice Korean Zen and have such a robe. The colors are essentially actual, taken from a photograph. I have been to Seoul, but I stayed in a temple at night.

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On my way to India, I stopped at Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, for a couple days, and went to the needle skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa. The painting Floor 124: Industrial Design is based on a photograph I took looking downward. The actual hues are the usual very light tans, concrete grays, and sand yellow (on the Persian Gulf in the Arabian Peninsula, Dubai has sand as far as the eye can see). The building roofs are different than found in our own cities; knowing that they would be seen from the great height of the landmark, they were designed with aesthetics as well as for function. The image is located permanently in both the Circle & Line series and the City Synthesis — Interiors & Exteriors series.

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Doha, Qatar, up the Persian Gulf from the United Arab Emirates is another architectural paradise. the painting here is derived from a composite of several photographs. So much construction is occurring there that the photographic record quickly becomes obsolete. The painting, entitled Brave Old World, is what the city looked like circa 2015, with, of course, far different colors! The canvas has 2.5 inch sides, which I painted as a continuum.

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Debra Jan Bibel

MORPHOLOGIES:
An Exploration, An Evolution

Fresh Paint

This page features the latest visual compositions, completed in 2017 and late 2016. Because the page will change with each new opus, monitor the page periodically. The images may also be found among the galleries.

NOTE: All reduced and overly processed images fail utterly in even hinting at the quality and the true colors of the actual paintings and their effect on the viewer.

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Some scrap wood and paint came together in the abstract, wall-hanging sculpture Escape Clause. It is located among the Miscellaneous series with other sculptures, jewelry, a mobile, and paintings.

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Stacy's View is that of Manhattan, and it is derived with her permission from a snapshot made by jazz vocalist Stacy Sullivan. This one I am keeping for myself, at least for now.

 

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A somewhat different painting, Wind of Change, has autumn leaves against tree shadows on dark earth coupled with the modern building by architect Zaha Hadid. Located in Baku, Azerbaijan, it is the Heydar Aliyev Center. Photography and computer processing failed to depict the red veins on the leaves. 

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Three different paintings are comparatively simple works, for a change, depicting railway bridges. They are part of a triptych I've been working on the railroad. Go Forth is the one at the Firth of Forth, Scotland (the Firth is akin to fjord); another is based on the curved and banked one in Rafsanjan, Iran, Desert Transverse; and Tunnel is derived from a stock photograph of a trestle bridge.

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Other View

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Path of Serenity (2016)
36 × 24 in.

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Brave Old World (2016)
40 × 30 in.

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All images are copyright by Debra Jan Bibel.  Permission for use in electronic media or for printed reproduction is required. 

Links to this website are permitted only if artist identification is included in direct view, not just within source code.