About a quarter of the way
through a painting, the struggles
begin. Richman will then distance
herself from the piece by means of
both time and photography. By leav-
ing the painting alone for a day or
two and then studying it as a digital
image on a monitor, she can analyze
the composition, color, values, edges
and so forth more objectively, and
then return to the painting to make
adjustments. The process of painting,
analyzing and adjusting continues
until the piece is finished.
MATERIALS
SURFACE:RivesBFK
printmakingpaper
GROUND:Golden
AcrylicGroundfor
Pastelsrandomly
appliedwitha 2-or
3-inchhouse-painting
brush
PASTELS:Mount
Vision,Great
AmericanArtWorks,
DianeTownsend,
Unison,TerryLudwig,
Schminckeand
Sennelier
FIXATIVE:SpectraFix
spray(usedsome-
timesbetweenlayers
butnotona finished
painting)
OTHER:charcoal
pencil,ragsand
papertowels,alcohol,
stumps,tortillons,
bristlebrushes“The trick to creating nonobjective paintings is to put something down
on paper that you can’t name. Naming is the bugaboo.”
ARLENE RICHMANEmerging Images
In one sense, though, it might be
said that it’s the viewer who com-
pletes Richman’s paintings, adding
an immaterial layer of reaction and
interpretation. In this way of think-
ing, the artist, too, becomes a viewer.
“My paintings are, no doubt, road
maps of my cumulative experiences,”
says Richman, “but I find ‘meanings’
in the same way any other viewer
finds them.”
Some of her paintings, Richman
acknowledges, suggest landscapes, acompositional horizontal line taking
on the identity of a horizon line (see
Mercury, opposite). Shapes along the
horizontal line may, in the viewer’s
mind, acquire labels of mountains or
structures or trees. She admits that
she nudged some of these paintings
to suggest landscapes because of
an exhibition she participated in;
others she feels were a reaction to a
particularly snowy Massachusetts
winter, during which she started
drawing colorful shapes beneath the
“horizon line,” shapes she has sinceArtistsNetwork.com 57