*     *     *

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.

*     *     *

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.

*     *     *

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.

*    *    *

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.

 

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.

 

*     *     *

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

*    *    *

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.

*    *    *

A winter of rains, two months labor, and 6,000 circles characterize Rain Ripples. It is a dazzling, energetic array that has the hazard under the influence of trippy mesmerization. A raindrop's view in a heavy shower of the approaching pond, perhaps?

The opposite of rains is drought. Desert, of 11,100 circles, reflects the cracked ponds, river beds and wadis with homogenous array of cacti, blooming sage, and succulents as based on photographs of desert lands in Nevada and Arizona.

Another environmental painting is Ocean, of 4,800 circles. The work is derived from computerized images of NASA & NOAA data of currents and of satellite views of spiral plankton concentrations.

Lava Fields, of 11,000 circles, is based on aerial photographs during an eruption of Mauna Loa in Hawai‘i.

 

 

\

 Link to enlargement  

 Link to enlargement  

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.