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2019 brought forth a new series of paintings within City Synthesis. The Resonance Series is of cities and landscapes using the earlier geometric studies of square, rectangle, stripes, and circle. Reduced to the basic shapes and with a satellite perspective, the real terrain becomes abstract, urban or rural. The subdued Familiar Terrain is the prototype experiment; its pattern is a short distance from where I live in Oakland. The curves are in contrast with Rockridge with its bold straight lines and colors. The business street is College Avenue, which extends from the California College of the Arts in Oakland to the University of California in Berkeley. West of Modesto is site of a rare highway cloverleaf in California and is an agricultural area near the Bay Area. The rural theme continues with the simple lines of a Central Valley roadside farm, Barstow Avenue. Kensington Circle is again intricate with another view of a nearby California city, with its rooted circle and menorah or treelike outgrowth. East Oakland Choreography, a third of a subgroup, The July piece is of San Francisco's South of Market area, also known as SoMa. Once, a light industrial area, it now includes the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and other museums, galleries, internet and digital companies, and tall office and residential skyscrapers. Its energetic, kinetic pattern suggests movement and change.  The following August work is Neighborhoods, being the adjacent Chinatown, Jackson Square and North Beach of San Francisco. Here, the feeling is stately, confident, calm, organized, and strong, but also industrial and mechanical as if on a building construction site looking toward the dense city. The September painting is The Seine, being a view of Boulogne-Baillancourt. It is the companion piece to SoMa and preferably should be exhibited as a set. The final 2019 work is Jaipur, which is my third painting inspired by my tour of Rajasthan.

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The new series continues in 2020. Completed in January is the multicolored Carnaval São Paulo. It took a long while of browsing to find this well-balanced kinetic pattern. Only later did I discover at least 5 associative ways to view my rendition, one of which reminds me of my laboratory research using the scanning electron microscope. However, in abstraction it is a matter of how one feels, how the painting affects the viewer, rather than what one 'sees.' Such is not necessarily a Rorschach test! This is my third painting of the Brazilian metropolis; I only saw it from the air, landing at its airport for transfer to Rio. Still in Brazil is February's painting Jardim Aeroporto. It is a district of São Paulo adjacent to Conghas-São Paulo Airport. Jardim means garden and, being a biologist, I can interpret the pattern as cells within a leaf with their numerous organelles. [See right column.]  If you google satellite map this location, you can easily understand my attraction and color choices. The painting offers eye-play and has a slight dazzling effect. The April painting is Kites of Kathmandu. Kites flying above the houses greeted my first morning in that Nepelese city in October 1985. Kite flying is a happy part of the Dashain festival.  In May, as The Pandemic still rages, I completed Tiburon. This is a town on San Francisco Bay in Marin County.  While the previous painting found order in chaos, this painting emphasizes symmetry; without its harbored sailboats and cruisers, the abstract quality emerges. Tiburon means shark in Spanish. In follow-up, and probably the second of a trio, is The Circles of Richmond, a largely industrial city along San Francisco Bay.

 

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Debra Jan Bibel

MORPHOLOGIES:
An Exploration, An Evolution

Fresh Paint

This page features the latest visual compositions, completed in 2019 and 2020. 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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An association with Jardim Aeroporto: Garden > Plant > Leaf
× 400, moss leaf

 

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Carnaval São Paulo (2020), 48 × 24 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.