My Geometrical Paintings

Leonurdo, Vol. 3, pp. 181-184. Pergamon Press 1970. Printed in Great Britain MY GEOMETRICAL PAINTINGS Frederick Hammersley* I paint. Ihave made drawings, donesomesculpture, made prints and this past year I have produced computer drawings [14]. My background of study was of the traditional kind. My paintings have evolved into a kind whose contact was limited essentially to the dictates of my intuition-not to conscious planning. The form that my paintings took was of flat, colored geometric shapes made with oil paint on canvas. In the beginning there were many shapes that I put down as they were ‘seen’ in my imagination. Later the shapes became fewer and more closely related to the rectangle of the canvas. Sometimes a painting would come complete in my mind’s eye. Sometimes a painting would start with but one shape that in time would lead to additional ones. One peculiar and satisfying aspect of this experience was the awareness of the new and unexpected logic of intuition. I did not have to think-I followed. I came to realize that intuition functions only when one has accumulated a fund of knowledge and experience. It is upon this that it seems to feed. The intuitive creative act seems to follow this sequence: spade work, planting, waiting and harvest. Painting, or any image-making process is to me a way of expressing a felt fact. This ‘image-fact’is, I feel, the end result of a subconscious filtering down of all my experiences. This image reveals not only myself, but the culture that I am a part of. And, I like to think that this kind of image represents a tribal heritage that can stimulate, in varying degrees, non-verbal understanding in an observer. The rightness and the order of the parts of an image supplied by intuition produces a sensation that is both new and familiar. The kind of image and the medium used are, I think, secondary. The prime concern for me is the content and feeling carried by the image. Granted, it is necessary to know the possibilities and limitations of a specific medium. It then seemsto followthat theknowledge of a medium supports and feeds image-making by way of intuition. Geometric painting is not new. While I believe that a painter is influenced by everything he sees, there was no one abstract painter that Iwasaware of who directly influenced my painting. In fact I did not especiallylike the geometric painters. It is only of late that I have come toappreciate Mondrian and the contemporary California painter, John *Artist living at 608 Carlisle, S . E . ,Albuquerque, New Mexico, 87106U.S.A. (Received24 April 1969.) McLaughlin. I suspect that I am like most painters in that I prefer my own work to others. There are painters who have always moved me and continually supply me with visual food. I have several favorites but four that come to mind are-Sasetta, Cezanne, Munch and Kokoschka. Each of these have clarity, power and emotional impact. They move me and remind me of what man can do. They also remind me of myself and of my potential, and give me hope that I might more fully use it. I like my paintings for the most part. They giveme pleasure. The element of pleasure in looking at painting is, I think, an important ingredient. Pleasure is the dividend of a well conceived and well made painting. Pleasure is the offspring of the harmonious combination of parts. Pleasure is awareness, the experiencing of a sense of rightness, the feeling of inevitability. Pleasure is the experiencing of the aesthetic. Bsthetics is visual food. At first, my paintings came slowly. Then near the end of what might be called the first stage, I was painting on fourteen canvases simultaneously. A day of painting would start with looking at the first of the canvases in process, which I had stacked face to the wall. If I got a reaction from that first canvas 1would place it on the easeland wait for the shape to materialize. If the first gave me no reaction I would go to the next one, and so on. On a good day of painting, I would...