L06 Color Field Painting

Cheryl Johnson and Jim Wildman's intuitive, poured Color Field painting techniques are influenced by their love of the  Abstract Expressionism style of painting.  Johnson and Wildman made their vibrant compositions by pouring paint directly onto the canvas, then tilting it. Hence, the paint dripped, bled, and pooled into fluid washes that are diaphanous or light, delicate, and translucent glazes. Their palettes and methodologies are reminiscent of the experiments of the woman abstract painter: Helen Frankenthaler. 

Johnson Wildman's paintings strive to express complex human emotions through vast color fields vibrating, moving, and melding against one another. The color draws you in. 

Abstract Expressionism heralds a body of work primarily credited to American artistic expression in the postwar period (the late 1940s and 1950s). Artists—including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, and Clyfford Still, amongst others—interested in spontaneity, monumental sized or large canvas. 

The focus is often on the psyche, taken from the Greek “psykhe”, which references “the soul, mind, spirit. and universal expressions of feeling.” Abstract Expressionism has been broken into two tendencies: Gestural Abstraction (or Action Painting), which emphasizes the energy of the painter’s mark, and Color Field Painting, which focuses on the creation of colors that are poured or seem to float, melting together in areas of the painting. 

Color Field Painting is r about the tension created by overlapping and interacting areas of flat color. These areas of color can be amorphous or without a clearly defined shape or form without clearly marked geometric areas. The tension of the colors colliding or blending is the "action" or the content. If you stand close to the canvas, the colors seem to extend beyond your peripheral vision, like a flowing river, lake or ocean of color. We hope you can almost feel the sensation of the colors themselves. We invite you to see our video about Alcohol Ink which is also another color field painting in a smaller scale. And hopefully, we will entice you to go see our other Videos on our Art Lessons Now site.