Foreground, Middle Ground and Background. Winslow Homer compared to Andrew Wyeth - Essay Example

Foreground, Middle Ground and Background Christina's World is a realist tempera portrait by iconic American artist Andrew Wyeth. In this picture, we can see great styles of art employed by the artist that helps us distinguish the foreground, middle ground and background. In his artist painting on the foreground, we can see Christina lying on the ground and it suggests that she is trying to make some movement to reach to the houses in the far background. The grass in the foreground also suggests that the picture was drawn regarding to the dry spell or the harvest season in Chadds. Christina seems mesmerized by her rural setting, a suggestion of breeze stroking her loose features of hair as she stares in the direction of her home, totally fascinated. Besides, we can note the distinguished passive color palette in the foreground that helps us to differentiate the harvested grass and that which is yet to be harvested. Moreover, the different color used helps distinguish the clothes that Christina is wearing from the where she is crawling. The light sandwiched between the household and the barn is the brightest theme of the painting and Christina is leading her head upwards in the direction of it.  In the middle ground of the Christina world painting, we can note several different features from the foreground. The foreground contains a huge part occupied by dry grass fields. In addition, we can see a huge part of this grass field has been harvested exposing the Christians family home. There is also a path created by a car that is used to access Christians home. At the rear end of the middle ground, there is a fence that surrounds Christians home. In the background of the painting Christina’s World, we can see the the family home where she lives. The painting suggests that she might be living with her family since it shows a huge two storey family home with other structures surrounding it. Among the structures are two large separate houses and a small single structure built in the unharvested grass field. We can also see a huge section of Christian’s family home has a compound with harvested grass. From the picture, we can suggest that the economic activity in the Christian’s World was farming. Content, Style, Axis, Symmetry, and Asymmetry In Christina's World, Wyeth used subdued colors to convey the tranquility of being restricted to a country setting. Andrew Wyeth’s works merged into his established and continuing style characterized by a passive color palette, convincing representations, and the illustration of emotionally charged, symbolic objects or people. Christina's World is based on a real life situation, which he encountered in Chadds, Ford area. This picture is a depiction of a victim of polio disease who tried to crawl up a hill. Christina looks as if fascinated by her rural background, a suggestion of just cuddling her movable filaments of hair as this woman stares en route to her home, entirely captivated. The perkiest part of the sky looks as if to gesture Christina like a blissful white light. A sole figure in the vast countryside, Christina is fairly susceptible to the harsh set up, but embraces it nevertheless to relish the attractiveness of the scene and her freedom. Andrew Wyeth’s, main passion of painting lay on the land and people around him. His works paintings were mainly based in his home town of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and at his seasonal family home in Cushing, Maine. His most popular painting was Christina's World, a 20th century art, currently preserved in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.  This painting portrays his neighbor, Christina Olson, rambling on a dry ground fronting her house. The countryside is in her world is generally dry and unproductive but has a suppleness to it which is bizarrely appealing. An else intimidating scene emits a sense of safety to the onlooker. The addition of a "crippled" young girl alters the background to to some degree obliging and approachable. This meant that Christina Olson had to spend most of her lifetime on the properties surrounding her home. Andrew Wyeth also has other popular paintings of Anna and Karl Kuerner who were also his neighbors in Chadds Ford. The painting style used in this picture is unique to himself and the entire painting fraternity as he maintained his style of realism. This can be seen in his picture paintings of landscape subjects and models as seen in Christina's World. Another distinguished style of his work appeared in "The Mill," an 18th-century building including one were known as “Night Sleeper” done in 1979. These were his solitary works and were great source of inspirations in his work. They enabled him to cultivate an extraordinary intimacy with the land and sea and strove for a spiritual indulgence founded on history and unspoken emotion.  The Christian’s world is done in pencil or slackly brushed watercolor prior to effecting a finished painting, either in watercolor, dry brush that is a watercolor style in which the water is cuddled from the brush, or egg tempera. The paintings of the Christian’s world depicted her innocence based on an Indian summer. Similar to his previous works, Andrew Wyeth used the styles of imagery, realism, passive color palette, realistic representations, and the representation of emotionally charged, symbolic objects or people. Another great style found in Andrew Wyeth’s paintings is oil painting. The oil paintings have attracted huge crowds in the modern museums, which preserves the great works of this noble artist. In his work, Wyeth’s oil paintings contain great depictions in their pictorial formal beauty of strong emotional currents, figurative content, and underlying abstraction. Andrew Wyeth is skilled in handling the media of egg tempera that uses egg yolk as its medium and watercolor. However, he avoided using traditional oil paints. Moreover, he used light and shadows to illuminate the canvas of his paintings. Besides, he used oil and titles to depict suggestive sounds, as can be seen in his many paintings including the “Distant Thunder” done in 1961 and “Spring Fed” done in 1967. Other great works of Andrew Wyeth include “Barefoot” “Airborne,” “Love In The Afternoon”, “Slight Breeze”, “Witching Hour”, “The Carry”, “Monday Morning”, “Snow Hill”, “Pentecost”, “Master Bedroom” “Jupiter”, “Winter” “Groundhog Day”, “Maga's Daughter”, and “Helga Series.” However, Wyeth’s work is subjected to various criticisms and has long been controversial. This is mainly based on his sharp contrast to abstraction being a representational artist. One of the main criticisms of Andrew Wyeth’s work is that it is a formulaic stuff, which is not very effective even as illustration realism. Moreover, it is based on the verges of illustration and that his countryside subject matter is sentimental. Andrew Wyeth’s best quote borrows heavily from his work and is a great indication of his love of his field of specialization (Adams and Wyeth). “I love to study the many things that grow below the corn stalks and bring them back to the studio to study the color. If one could only catch that true color of nature - the very thought of it drives me mad. I also search for the realness, the real feeling of a subject, all the texture around it. I always want to see the third dimension of something. I want to come alive with the object. Besides, I surrendered to a world of my imagination, reenacting all those wonderful tales my father would read aloud to me. I became a very active reader, especially history and Shakespeare” Winslow Homer Foreground, Middle Ground and Background Among the most popular drawings by Homer is the Gulf stream. In the foreground of this painting, we can see illustrations of the encounters they faced while crossing the ocean. In the foreground of his painting, we can see dead people from the hurricane they encountered in the gulf. The picture is painted in a dark scenario depicting the sad moment. Moreover, there are several capsized boats that they used to cross the ocean. In the middle ground, the theme color painting is bright and contains calm water from the already calm ocean. The painter is selective in the choice of color since he mixes blue and white to show the ocean. The blue color shows the ocean while the white color shows waves from the high tides of the hurricane. Moreover, the painter uses the white color to show the shores of the ocean. In addition, the middle ground has bodies of dead people from the hurricane. In the background, the painter uses a dark color to indicate the mountains, cloud and generally to cover the moods of sorrow in the picture. This dark color is also used to show the slope of the mountains. Moreover, it shows overlapping sea tides that suggestively could have washed ashore the dead men. Content, Style, Axis, Symmetry, and Asymmetry Despite the fact that Winslow Homer was not scrupulously trained in the art of painting, his knowledge as a salable illustrator provided him the preparation he required to become an advanced painter in the future. He captured various Frontline pictorials in the civil wars that existed during that period. Until now, these illustrations have become popular and heroic imageries of life during the country’s revolutionary era. Similarly, to Andrew Wyeth’s work, Homers’ early paintings have similar characteristic that takes various forms. This includes arts based on social scenes, clean sketches, abridged forms, dramatic disparity of light and dark, and dynamic figure groupings. These unique qualities were instrumental to his career as well as forming a fundamental foundation and inspiration for the career of other painters. Similar qualities and characteristics can be drawn from the work of Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth. These include factors such as aesthetic considerations. In both painters, we note that there images make sense visually. This happens in that the brightness and the darkness of the paintings relate well to the variety of standards essential by the drawing media. In addition, Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth used pencils to draw their paintings. The final product from their pencil paintings and Chinese white wash ensured a brilliant match of colors that lasted for a longer period in contrast to other painters’ works. Moreover, the pencil lines of the drawings could not be seen against the very dark brown color of the paper they used. While studying the interaction of the media and the paper, I noted that in both cases it appears that the original color of the paper is somehow protected due to the chemical interaction caused by the watercolors and chalks, which contained the white pigments. Another major similarity notable in both cases is the use of similar drawing material. One notable thing is that the common drawing material was gray-blue and gray-green paper. The papers were dark brown, abstemiously thick, rough textured, interlaced paper that was made from unbleached linen threads, and contained numerous trivial black particulate impurities, which were recognized as charcoal and anthracite coal. These papers were hard and therefore would last for a longer period compared to other papers. In his picture “Gulf Stream” similar qualities with those of Andrew Wyeth can be noted. This includes, a passive color palette, realistic representations, and the representation of emotionally charged, symbolic objects and people. Some of Homers successive paintings capture peaceful scenes from of children playing in schoolyards, workers in the cotton fields, families on seashores and anglers at the lakes of the Adirondacks. They also show a vivid description of American life throughout the post-Civil War period. However, what is mostly seen in Homers paintings is man’s harmony with nature is expressed rather than the war. Other paintings by Winslow Homer that shows similar quality include The Card Game, and Mussell Gatherers. Little dissimilarities can be noted in the two cases. However, there was no better tool that would have been used to by Winslow Homer to match the standards set by Andrew Wyeth. This is because at the time of Andrew Wyeth, the level of technology had greatly improved thus resulting to better paintings for Andrew Wyeth. Moreover, the drawing papers used had a longer lasting lifespan in Andrew Wyeth to maintain in comparison to Winslow Homer. In conclusion, I can note various similarities and differences in both cases. One major similarity is that both painters used enduring styles characterized by a passive color palette, realistic representations, and the representation of emotionally charged, symbolic objects and people. In particular, Homer used colored paper for many of his drawings. Even though it is always likely that an artist used a specific sort of paper only once, typically one can discover other illustrations for contrast. Homer was one day quoted saying in reference to one of his paintings showing the sky, “You have the sky overhead giving one light; then the reflected light from whatever reflects; then the direct light of the sun; so that, in the blending and suffusing of these several laminations, there is no such thing as a line to be seen anywhere. He is also quoted saying referring to upcoming artists “Artists should never look at pictures, but should stutter in a language of their own.” This means that artists should not only see the picture from outside but should have a deeper vivid view, and connect to their emotions to see what the artist implied (Perkinson).   Works Cited Adams, Henry and Andrew Wyeth. Andrew Wyeth: master drawings from the artist's collection. Michigan: Brandywine River Museum, 2010. Print. Perkinson, Roy. Observations on the Drawings of Winslow Homer. 03 August 2011. Web. 22 october 2012. Read More