Your brain is the result of millions of years of natural selective breeding. (Well, maybe not that selective. Have you met my brother-in-law?) Brains that recognized edges survived to raise babies. Brains that didn't recognize edges fell out of the tree or tumbled over cliff faces and sadly had fewer chances to reproduce. So after thousands of generations, our brains have become quite good at defining shapes, evaluating distance and getting a buzz from recognizing high definition edges. Blacks. Blues. Hot reds. Shimmering whites. Yahoo!
Our love for these images; for high contrast negative and positive spaces (think 'Sin City'), for illusions of depth, for contrasting color - are buried deep in our central processing system, in our visual cortex. When we see a flat representation of reality (example, the 'Under The Snow' painting above), our brain adds a lot of processing power to the image to get the definition improved, add depth and seek out context.
In the process, our visual processing system hits those black spaces and hard edges and our brains light up. (OK! Not everyone gets the same buzz to the same degree, but if you do, you know what I mean.) That buzz is dopamine. A chemical very similar to cocaine. But it's natural and free - and we never get tired of the effect.
Poplar trees in the snow are a rich field for edge junkies. The painting in progress above is only one of several I am currently experimenting with, inspired by photos like this one, taken in late December at Birds Hill Park in Manitoba.Gives your edge detection software a real workout.
Painting shown is by the author, Underneath The Snow #1, 24" x 36", Feb 2009. For a larger view, please click on the image. To purchase artwork, please send email.
No comments:
Post a Comment