Today’s artwork is by Jim Flanagan from Phoenix, Arizona. Deliberately painted to be colorful, vivid, and just Fauvian in general, I think Jim’s paintings are a real visual treat.
Of course, I understand that this style of paintings might not be everyone’s first choice—but in my opinion, taking colors to the extreme is one way for an artist to exert total control over his or her artwork. And that’s pretty cool, don’t you think?
So after receiving that first painting, titled Gift from the Sea, in my email inbox, I went to Jim’s website and browsed through the rest of his work.
While not all of them were equally successful, these next three paintings definitely caught my eye.
In Flowerpot, Jim used greens and reds (which are traditional complementary colors) and some light blue to really make this painting visually POP for the viewer.
And even though he’s pushing the color spectrum pretty far, he didn’t forget to use the correct amount of positive and negative space. There’s a fairly even balance between the total amount of powerful red in this painting and all the other colors, resulting in a very nicely composed painting.
This next one, City of Angels, is another favorite.
Again, Jim’s working with a few strong complementary colors and some supporting adjacent colors. I love how the orange palm trees fade downward, and how everything fades into the distance.
Finally, as though his first flower painting wasn’t vivid enough, here’s one that really takes the cake. Two Blossoms adds even more eye-blazing contrast with magenta and green, pure red, and some aqua-colored blue.
These paintings are absolutely great just like they are, and the only thing I’d suggest to Jim is to include patterns in more of his other paintings too. With Fauvian-style artwork, using repeating patterns and motifs really gives you the chance to enhance color to its fullest extent.
Even some of the landscapes on his website could benefit from a dose of pattern. Imagine mesas and desert formed by contour lines of alternating pink and green. Now that would be something.
To see all of Jim Flanagan’s paintings, or to inquire after one you see here, visit his website at www.flanaganstudio.com.