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Pentimenti and My Painting Process

  • Writer: sharonkingston
    sharonkingston
  • Sep 19, 2014
  • 1 min read

presence of absence, 30 x 30 inches, oil on canvas painting, Sharon Kingston

This abstract painting is ripe with with pentimenti–meaning the underlayers and marks that show through subsequent layers.  This effect is hard to photograph because it is not high contrast, yet ever so important to the experience of the painting and the sentiment I tried to evoke.  There is a richness of depth to take in, if you can get the viewer to stop skimming the surface for just one minute.  There is a sense of water and fluidity and just a suggestion of landscape.  And there is warmth.  None of these things will be gotten from a social site post or pin.  Like most art, it is a need to see in person kind of painting.

This painting is from my Presence of Absence series and newly completed this week.  I encourage you to read the poem to understand why having those revealing-by-concealing forms are so relevant.

To Lou Andreas-Salomé, Duino, late autumn, 1911

Memory is not enough… I do not recollect. What I am is alive in me because of you. I do not reinvent you at sadly cooled-off places you have left behind. Even your absence is filled with your warmth and is more real than your not-existing. Longing often meanders into vagueness. Why should I throw myself away when something in you may be touching me, very lightly, like moonlight on a window seat.

Rainer Rilke – Uncollected Poems

 
 
 

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    Sharon Kingston is a Bellingham WA (Washington) based artist.  As an oil painter she uses the properties of her medium to create paintings that respond to both the atmosphere of her surroundings and poetry. This method of looking inward and outward and, in the moments of painting, finding her way on the canvas is her approach to creating paintings infused with poetry and the memory of landscape. The atmospheric element of her work is a testament to her desire to create spaces that are undefined, contemplative and allow room to reflect and accept uncertainty. Poetry, by nature open ended, is used both in the conceptualization of the work and as a part of the studio practice. The words of Rainer Rilke have informed Sharon’s work for many years, but she also turns to contemporary poetry when it resonates with her life. She uses layers of transparent color, reveals forms by concealing and unearthing pentimenti and suggests elements of landscape in her process.

    People describe her paintings as ethereal, atmospheric, contemplative, PNW inspired, and filled with light and mood.  She has a storefront art studio in downtown Bellingham and welcomes you view her paintings in person.

    SHARON KINGSTON STUDIO

    203 PROSPECT ST

    Bellingham WA  98225

    studio gallery 
    open by appointment

    please send me a text with the
    day and time you'd like to come by.
    360-739-2474

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