New Painting #4 in My Home by Dr. Sam Lam
This painting was done recently but is reminiscent of my earlier work that was made by taping off areas to create absolute controlled perfection and to remove the artist’s hand entirely. Using thick acrylic paint on a canvas of 4′ x 6′, I focused on colors that really worked together. It is so hard to convey to you why I like the colors and why they work but they simply do. Also like many of my paintings, they were created on Adobe Illustrator during my “sketching” phase in which I also drew in the fireplace and background wall to see how that painting would fit within its site-specific context and I could see that it would work well.
Once I got that down, I worked with basic color layouts, which I then refined by holding tubes of orange, blue, green, and yellow paint in my hand until the ensemble of colors hit me as the correct match. I can’t explain why almost no other orange, green, blue, or yellow would work, but they wouldn’t. The dark blue and dark green provide a contrast against the bright and solid orange and yellow colors. I also alternated cool colors with warm colors. My cool colors are dark, and my warm colors are bright. I also think the curvilinear design works to break the monotony of four vertical stripes and suggests a fun playfulness. If you look carefully, you will also notice that I bent the lines differently on top and bottom so that they are not a perfect banana shape. That adds a small degree of visual intrigue.
The background was painted with a canvas-like beige color called Titan Buff (made by Golden paints, which I use for 95% of my paints). I used Titan Buff also for the background for the featured painting Amsterdam. I think it creates an amazingly softer feel than the stark white gessoed background that I typically employed in the past. I was thinking about framing it with a floating frame that you see oftentimes in museums, i.e., a frame that would sit an inch outside of the outer perimeter of the frame, but was advised by my interior designer not to do it, as it would disturb the visual purity of the work. I agree with him. When I work with someone with good taste that is in alignment with my own taste, I rarely dictate anything but let that person be creative. If someone that I work with has poor or no taste, I micromanage them to the point that they probably would never want to work with me again (which is a good thing!) The background paint that my interior designer chose of bluish-gray green is amazingly sophisticated and works so well as a “neutral” color to enhance this painting without competing with it. As I talked about in describing some other paintings regarding masculine and feminine energy, this painting is very masculine in its energy. It almost has to be because it is the dominant force in my great room and anchors the room very well.
What was very interesting is that my friend Terry Timm came by and said, “Sam, can I ask you why you hung your painting the way you did?” I had no idea what he meant, but he explained that the orange (which was originally on the left) did not frame the painting well because it sat at the end of the wall near a door and that the darker blue would do better. I turned the painting around and sure enough it subtly worked better in the room. That Sunday, I rewired the painting to hang as you see it now. That is a good example of listening to someone who has great taste (and I have been to his house and he is an avid art collector) and trusting another artist’s instinct.
