Between the Notes

"Les Grands Clements"
15 x 11, Oil on Linen
(c) Maggie Siner

I recently read a quotation from Mozart: "The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between." Oh, wow. My mind flew immediately to an analogy with painting. One might say that in painting, the art is not in the objects portrayed, but in the spaces between them. These spaces are often called "negative spaces"--but that term definitely does not do them justice!

"Traghetto"
Oil on Linen
(c) Maggie Siner

Just look at the top painting. The house is nice, yes; and also the tree. But what I really love are the negative spaces between the tree branches, where you glimpse the house between. Those spaces make the painting sing. And in the

Words to Live By

"Laundry Day"
12 x 16, oil on canvas
(c) Lesley Powell 2018
(Available at Shain Gallery, Charlotte)

I am fresh out of original inspiration today, so I thought I would share some quotations from others. These are words that have special meaning for me. Some of them have become like mantras, which run through my head while I am painting. Others are ones that I quietly ponder in less active moments. Most of these have meaning well beyond the world of painting. I hope you will enjoy them.

"Provence, Distilled: Blue Door"
8 x 6, oil on paper
(c) Lesley Powell 2018
(SOLD)

Simplicity is the final achievement.

After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges

as the crowning reward of art.

--Frederic Chopin

Practicing an art, 

no matter how well or badly,

is a way to make your soul grow.

--Kurt Vonnegut

"Notre Dame, Morning Light"
9 x 12, Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2018
(Available)

A picture
is a poem without words.
--Horace

[I]n all the arts
there are usually two things going on at the same time:
the desire to make it new,
and a continuing conversation with the past.
--Julian Barnes

Combining Two Loves

"Nude Woman Seated in an Urn"
Auguste Rodin

When I visited the Rodin Museum in Paris, I was struck by what is called Rodin's "assemblage". That is, Rodin often combined different elements which, although not naturally related, spoke to him in some way. Rodin had gathered a collection of fragments from ancient Greece and Rome--both pieces of sculpture and other antiquities, such as urns and vases. These fragments served as a springboard into some of his most interest assemblages (such as that above), in which he combined the classical antiques with his own sculptures.

"Blue Pot"
20 x 12, Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2018
Available at Shain Gallery, Charlotte

Alas, I am not as creative or as bounds-breaking as Rodin. But I did think of him recently when I was working on my  series of orchid paintings. Faithful followers know that I love to paint orchids. I really respond to the warm terra cotta of the clay pots that contained the first orchids. But I also have