What Winston Hewitt
has to say about his art!
Most
artists consider me as being primarily a colorist. My vibratory
art with its vivid and sometimes psychedelic color effects,
has some roots in Op Art, and even in Huichi yarn paintings.
Yet, I paint exclusively in oils. For the ten 36" X
48" canvases in the " Scapes of the Subconscious"
series and many of the works that followed, I radically
changed my technique. First of all, each shape,
including lines and squiggles, must be painted "in
a flat hard edged color." Furthermore, spatial
dimension must "appear" through these
juxtaposition of these colored shapes.
This new technique allowed the easy solutions of using contrasting
outlines around shapes to clearly separate those of nearly
equal tone. The time and effort spent in the constant honing
of hues, values and intensities of colors became the focus
of refining this technique. No fewer that three coats of
pigment were required to complete each color field. The
continual refinement of colors lengthened the time span
for completion of each canvas. The additional coats of paint
were were beneficial in the long because they allowed me
to enrich the contours of the shadows and highlights so
that each shape could suggest a human, animal, or vegetable
form, and often two or more images were suggested at the
same time by any given color field.
For
example, one reads in the publication Artist of the
Northwest I , Mountain productions, Inc.0 (P. 63): "Hewitt
depicts nature as animistic, sensual, erotic and anthropomorphized.
The images, including including the squiggles, are intended
to lead the observer through associations from the natural
phenomena of the physical universe into the various levels
of the psyche, as well as various realms of mysticism, mythology,
metaphysics, literature, history, aesthetics and art"
Therefore,
each work is to be interpreted in multiple manners. A single
painting may depict simultaneously two or more of Antiquities
premises that the universe is composed of four primary elements
being: earth, water, air and fire. For example, some rolling
hills may also be seen at the same time as being sea waves,
or billowing clouds, or the cross section of a flame or
women's thigh, etc. Scale is generally absent or without
accent so that the spatial scapes may be interpreted as
atomic or galactic in dimension. Is this a macrocosm or
a macrocosm?
The
paintings are not designed as games for the spectator to
find hidden objects. Rather, each painting is designed for
long and repeated viewings by a relaxed and unhurried spectator
who allows his/her levels of the conscious, subconscious
and unconscious to form or even create something out of
many seemingly amorphous, formless and ambiguous shapes.
At
times, interaction with the paintings is like an image thought
that has to be unraveled into,acceptable and understandable
terms from the viewer's own reality and experience. The
images are intended to lead one by associations from the
natural phenomena of the physical universe into the realms
of psychology, metaphysics, mysticism. mythology, literature,
history, aesthetics, drama and art. In short, the metamorphoses
occur both on my canvases and also in the mind and imagination
of the viewers. |
