Have I Lost my Edge?

"Polished Teapot"
9 x 12, Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2016

Have I lost my edge? I'm not using the phrase in the conventional way, in which  losing one's edge is negative. Instead, I'm talking about a very painterly concept, in which lost edges are highly desirable. In fact, one of the key features of a strong and interesting painting is the presence of different types of edges. Some edges are sharp, some edges are blurry, and some edges can be completely "lost". 

"Silver and Lemons"
12 x 16, Oil on Linen
(c) Lesley Powell 2016

What exactly is a "lost edge"? It is a place where there is literally no delineation between two different things. I love a lost edge! It lets the viewer fill in the missing information, and

Abstraction

"Villars from Afar"

8 x 13

One of the painters whose blog I follow is Colin Page. Colin recently posted a painting of an old bicycle, and wrote about how he created some abstraction within a representational painting. It was a wonderful post, and he explained so clearly his thought process and decisions about what to "abstract".

 

One technique Colin wrote about was "lost edges". I have previously posted about this approach in  "Not Too Edgy". The play of lost and found edges makes a painting interesting, and it involves the viewer much more than a perfectly delineated painting. I tried to use lost edges in the village scene shown above. Rather than drawing each roof, I simply chose one color shape for a part of the village, and then broke the lines up with the green of the trees.

Colin also described his use of calligraphic brush strokes in the foreground of his painting. He was looking for an opportunity to use some lyrical lines, and found it in the grasses. That is the same thing I was doing with the foreground of the painting above. There was a large stretch of vineyard in the immediate foreground, and I simply wanted to suggest it by means of bright green brushstrokes, and a few dark strokes for the shadows between the vines. I liked the overall effect, and have posted the painting as the cover photo from my website.

Not Too Edgy

"Bialetti"

11 x 14

We painters spend a lot of time fretting about "edges". In fact, I believe that one of the key elements of a successful painting is varying the treatment of edges, and making the right choices as to which edges should be "hard" and which ones "soft".  

Sometimes an edge can be made so soft that it virtually disappears. These are what we call "lost edges"--places where there is literally no delineation between two objects. I love to find opportunities to lose edges. It is amazing how little definition between objects is actually required, because the viewer's brain will fill in lots of missing information. 

In this painting, I challenged myself to create a number of lost edges. I managed to completely lose the left edge of the tall vessel behind the Bialetti coffee maker, letting it blend right in with the background, as you see can in this detail:

I loved this edge treatment...it helped move the tall vessel into the background, and the sharp, hard edge of the Bialetti spout comes forward by comparison.

I also lost the right edge of the little yellow pitcher, letting it fade in to the larger pitcher behind it (detail below):

I saved the crisp edges in this painting for the Bialetti coffee maker, which is the main subject, and for the spouts of the various containers, which are all pointing inward to draw the eye in. Great fun. 

One could make a game of counting the hard and soft edges in this painting. Lori Woodward says that the mark of a professional painting is that it includes several lost edges. I wonder whether she would find that this painting makes the mark?

By the way, if you notice the reddish hue on one of the surfaces of the Bialetti, it is a reflection from the red apron I was wearing while working on the painting. So there is a hint of a self portrait in this canvas!

Here's another painting featuring my little Bialetti coffee maker. See if you can find the lost edges in this one!

"Italian Breakfast"

12 x 16