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Chelsea Gatewood

Formation

Updated: Jan 11



The Idea





A few months ago I painted the piece you see above.  All I knew is that I wanted to incorporate circles, smooth lines, and basic colors.  It wasn’t until I completed the painting that I decided it reminded me of the cosmos.  Simply defined, the cosmos includes all of space and energy that space contains. It’s the complex and orderly system that surrounds us.  I wasn’t around to see it happen, but I’m sure it had to start somewhere.  This brought me to the conclusion to call this piece Cosmos


Additional Thoughts





When you’re first learning about colors they teach you the basics. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.  Then you almost immediately think back to when you opened your first giant pack of Crayola crayons and realize “but wait, there are more colors than this”.  For me, that realization happened with pink, very soon into my education of the basic colors.


Hot Take?




Point being, everything that has existed and will exist comes from the basics in the beginning.  I look at it as that the universe created itself and now we’re creating things with pieces of the universe.  Specifically from an artist's perspective, I could take strawberries, cherries, or bright green leaves that have grown from the earth to stain different fabric materials to create an art piece.


So here me out with these parallels…


ROYGBP : The basic elements of the universe/ cosmos 

The circles : The orderly systems

The background/ negative space : The literally space and energy 

The pink : Myself or how I appear as a part of the universe. 





Now that you have a better idea of the first painting “Cosmos”, it’ll be easier to communicate “Formation”.





We see formations occur organically in nature almost every day.  Cloud and rock formations for instance can be defined as configurations or arrangements.  Although clouds and rocks are, of course, not living; formation can also mean an emergence, or coming into being.  When I hear of something coming into being, I think of it as being alive. 




Formation is a continuation of Cosmos; the next step in humanity.  After a few sketches I realized that the elements resembled a cityscape and that’s what I decided to stick with! 


It was important that only the basic colors - as mentioned in the “parallels” above - were utilized for this painting as to not insinuate additional complexity but instead a continuation of 





The “buildings” however, are the main subjects that represent humanity.  Although chaos persists in humanity we’ve still managed to reach a harmonious point to where we’ve successfully organized complex societies featuring cities where individuals can use their time exploring the affliction and delight living has to offer. 




Based on composition - the colors being in order - one can assume the city is generally in order and things are good.  The white space above the city may be light pollution before the black night sky or it may just be.  The circle in the top right hand corner may be a sun or a moon as both of them have been known to be red at some point or another. 


Overall, looking at Formation now makes me feel calm, happy, and hopeful.  I enjoy the bold yet orderly fashion of the colors. 


I’d love to hear your thoughts!  Thanks for reading ☺️

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