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The year 2022 begins with a straightforward retro painting of a skyline as viewed outside my dinning room window. Needing to keep busy while my creative Muse is away on December holidays, probably trying to escape the pandemic, I produced this small work by size yet with the continuing harmony of pattern and hue. A View to the West was produced in its actual color scheme, albeit with saturated and somewhat altered hues.

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Park for a Sultan is a painting of the Sultan Ahmet Park near the famous Blue Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey. The central blue endless star-knot is a fountain. The buildings in reality are uniformly gray.

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Consisting of over 14,000 circles is Zen. The work, when viewed somewhat close, dazzles. Taken from an aerial view of a river in the Amazon basin, with study it becomes more metaphoric. For instance, look for patterns and the mind will play games, pareidolia. Sometimes words seem to form, other times, different zones of light and dark, large and small, and  near and far are apparent, but the patterns shift around. Are the circles trees, or atoms, or globular molecules? The river arrangement is representative of Tao, of wabi-sabi. Thus, the relatively simple composition, like an Asian one-stroke ink brush drawing, opens psychologically and philosophically.

Temple of Democracy is completed on June 30, just in time for Independence Day, 4th July. The Capitol building and grounds have been much in the news lately by the Congressional hearings on the January 6th, 2021 insurrection at this location and its current political enablers. It joins Mosque, The Good Friday Experiment [Vatican], and Kosmic Kyoto in the group of key cultural buildings.

The second Washington, D.C., painting is the elegant, handsome Two Museums. The outlines of neo-classical Beaux-Arts architecture of the Museum of Natural History and the National Art Gallery reminded me first of Hopi Kachina dolls and then Mayan ornamentation, and so the color palette was selected. The roof hues of one building are close to actual. The art is first being open to particular patterns of interest when browsing aerial/satellite views, then cropping the image for aesthetics and adjusting the size for the intended canvas. Next, is color choice, and finally is the precision in painting.

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Debra Jan Bibel

MORPHOLOGIES:
An Exploration, An Evolution

Fresh Paint

This page features the latest visual compositions, completed in 2022 and 2023. 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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Perceive the wind, perceive the dance comprises 1,500 circles, and it is influenced by New England tree hues in autumn. The contrast of blue/orange can be perceived dimensionally, with the lake seen as a hole in the above planar tree array. Op effects may lead to awareness of mind and mindfulness.

Wildflowers is derived from photos of California wildflowers (orange poppies, yellow buttercups, purple asters) after spring rains. It consists entirely of 4,200 circles.

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1 January 2023 is the completion of Rose Garden, based on images of the Municipal Rose Garden of San José, CA and visits and images of the nearby Morcom Rose Garden of Oakland, CA. By the use of small circles to create the painting, it retrospectively resembles the art of Australian Aboriginees (which consists of uniform dots). As the previous two works, it is not an in-scale depiction of actual terrain but an impression, following the usual geometric idealistic aerial perspective. Some 5,500 circles form the painting.

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A winter of rains, two months labor, and 6,000 circles characterize Rain Ripples. It is a dazzling array that has the hazard, when under the influence of THC, of trippy mesmerization.

 

 

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

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