Beyond Textures

I have always been attracted to textures. I love textures on paintings, collages, assemblages.
I look for textured papers and ways to texture the paint and the surfaces of my paintings and collages. There are different ways to achieve texture. One way is to paint or draw lots of small shapes, lines or dots. Another way is to apply textures like rough papers, straw, dirt, clay or whatever you want. There is something very seductive and sensual about textures because they imply the idea of "touch".

Textures can be found everywhere.... old walls, sidewalks, doors... weathered and worn wood, and rusty metal. Nature and the passage of time can work its magic on the surface of the world around us.

There is subtle beauty and texture on the surface of a stone.

Fred Otnes is a collage artist who uses textures and imagery to create a world where secrets and mysteries emerge from his torn papers and scratched away paint. If you are interested in his book you can go to his website here to purchase it.

Antoni Tapies was born in Barcelona in 1923. His heavily textured works involve large surfaces covered with paint, sand, marble dust, wire, paper, or cloth. He has immersed himself in a Zen-like minimalism of color suggesting a highly spiritual content. His rough textures have an organic feel. Tapies is a visual poet, capturing the human imprint of what has been used and what has existed. You can find his work in museums all over the world and there are many books available at Amazon.com.


Anselm Kiefer was born in Germany in 1945, the year Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies.
He grew up in the aftermath of the war. Poet, Paul Celan, was born in Romania in 1921. In 1945, he had survived the labor camps but his parents and family members had died in the concentration camps. His poetry is linked to his memories of the Holocaust, and his poetry has influenced Kiefer's work on every level. The above book, and others on Kiefer's works, are available at Amazon.com.

Kiefer portrays or reveals the imagined desolate, wasted landscapes by using straw, ashes, earth, clay, sand, hair-- all exposed to the passage of time. His works are monumental, measured in feet, not inches.
"I never see a forest that does not bear a mark or a sign of history." --- Anselm Kiefer


Texture of Life
Taste the dew on leaves
with your tongue
Savor the lushness of grass
beneath your feet
Inhale the redolence of
fresh morning air
Touch the textures with
tender fingers.
---- Chanti