Still Life with Many Objects, oil, 52 x 46, Martha Hayden
“Still Life with Many Objects” is a study in formalism. There is no narrative to hold the objects together; their relationships are purely abstract.
In this complicated painting, I have many elements functioning on multiple levels. My diagrams show arrangements and hierarchies of vertical and horizontal planes, of diagonals and pyramidal shapes and of movements through space and air.
This painting is an outgrowth of a series of works about windows, about outside and inside, about seeing near and far together.
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Vertical planes, notice hierarchies
Horizontal planes
The painting is composed in more than one way. These overlaps reinforce and also contradict each other. Seeing (life) is that way.
There is a composition of rectangles, a composition of verticals and horizontals, and there is a composition of triangles, a composition of diagonals. There is a composition of color: a large negative blue space with a yellow ground plane moving under it. There is a composition of planes, horizontals moving in, and verticals moving out.
