On Density

Below are five images. The first is a photograph of snow on bushes in my backyard. As you page down to view the successive images, you will see a pattern emerge through the snow covered bushes. I will identify this pattern after it fully appears in the fifth image.

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The final image is Jackson Pollock's painting called Number One-1948.  Pollock is famous for pouring paint onto canvases placed on the floor.  His art has far more method to it than people think, but I am not concerned with his methods.  The results are images with a uniquely dense quality to them. The fullness of the densities Pollock arrived at in Number One are hard to see in the small image here, but the overall quality is evident and characteristic of the paintings for which Pollock is most well known.  I merged Pollock's painting with the photograph of snowy bushes as a means of revealing the aesthetic densities that are part of our everyday surroundings. The bushes and Pollock's painting share a similar density, revealed in part by the Photoshop trick I employed of layering the snow image over the Pollock image and successively reducing the opacity of the top layer.  I think that visual density has a strong aesthetic appeal.  I will fill out this thought in subsequent posts.

Leaf Compositions

Toward the end of his life, Henri Matisse created shapes by cutting them out from colored papers. His works of this period are called "cut-outs." Matisse could array a set of simple shapes, such as in “La Gerbe”, to produce a delightful composition.  Today, we have Photoshop. I scan leaves and play with Photoshop's layers and difference filter.

Leaf Mash Up

For “Leaf Mash Up”, I started with a “J” form of White Oak leaf, made copies on several layers, and obtained the multicolored effect with the difference filter. The interesting thing about the difference filter is that you are not sure what will come out when you use it, and the surprise can bring delight.

Curved Red

“Curved Red” employs a Red Oak leaf, which I copied twice and rotated each copy. Again, the Difference filter is responsible for the coloring.

Ginkgo

I liked the colors that came out in “Ginkgo”. Here there are only two layers, the base and its copy, rotated 90 degrees clockwise.

Maples

 “Maples” uses red and Japanese maple leaves, superimposed.

Pin Oak Study

For “Pin Oak Study”, I rotated a pin oak leaf eight times. The difference filter creates the “interference” effect, somewhat as in the crests and troughs of colliding waves.

Swirl

“Swirl” is a red oak leaf rotated and superimposed on itself, with a gradient background.

Seven Red Oak Leaves

Oak trees of the same species produce leaves that differ remarkably from one another. In my limited experience, White Oaks attain to the widest variation, but there is also noticeable variety among Pin Oak and Red Oak leaves.

A and B represent the characteristic shape that Red Oak leaves take on. The leaf blade comprises a usually wide base and an elongated midsection. The base has two pointed lobes, which spread outward. Sometimes the lower lobes are rather stumpy, as in A. Sometimes, as in B, the lobes arc gracefully. The midsection can be short or, as in B, quite long. It can also become elaborated, as in C, with multiple, pointed projections. Some leaves have two sets of lower lobes, as in D and E. But E differs greatly from D with regard to the curvature of its lobes. Did these lobes reach out from underneath a covering branch for greater sunlight? Oddly, in E the second lobe on the right curves downward, or inward with respect to the tree trunk. In F the midsection curves even more than in E, as does the right lobes that corresponds to the downward directed lobe in E. . The twisting G is almost deformed. It would be hard to recognize G as a Red Oak leaf.

Ten White Oak Leaves

I have arranged ten white oak leaves in an array to illustrate the wide variety of shapes these leaves can have. Although B exemplifies the shape most often presented in botanical books and web sites as the characteristic lobed form for this species, the examples here demonstrate the wide variations of this leaf's lobes. The leaves vary not only by the number and shape of the lobes' substructures but also by the curvatures of the lobes. The lobes can be quite simple, but for the most part they are interestingly elaborated. Sometimes, as in J, they are uniquely wild.

Perhaps A had not reached its maturity before it fell to the ground. Its lower lobes are articulated, in conformity with the standard white oak model, but its upper lobes are clustered about the leaf blade, forming a mass that is not fully articulated. In B, all lobes are clearly delineated. C's lobes have begun to form sub-structures, although these are barely noticeable. Substructures become a bit more articulated in D, while E's lobes take on a curvature that emphasizes the substructures. F's lobes have multiple substructures, as do G's, where they are more clearly formed than in F. The lobes of H are even more highly elaborated. Leaf I retains a fair amount of elaboration in its lobes, but the lobes are narrow and subject to drastic upswings. In J, the narrow, elaborated lobes, seem to take on a life of their own, bending in all directions. With the exception of A, which I think might be an immature leaf from a tree whose leaves look mostly like B, each of these leaves has a shape that is characteristic of the particular tree from which they come. J has the most unusual shape I have come across in a White Oak. Other leaves from the “J” tree also have weirdly configured lobes, each one varying a little or a lot from the others. In another posting, I will display several “J” examples.

Matisse's Leaves

On the left, a photograph of white oak leaves lying on the street. On the right,"La Gerbe,"an image composed by Henri Matisse, who used leaf forms in many of his late works composed of shapes he cut out of paper. Here the artist has arranged his leaves so that they appear to fly outward from a point at the bottom of the composition. The leaves have a dynamic energy lacking in the somewhat haphazard group of leaves lying on the street. Perhaps Matisse's leaves are swirling in the air.

The liveliness of Matisse's composition emerges not only from the artist's arrangement of the leaves in relation to one another, but also from his depiction of each leaf's shape. The leaves share an overall similarity of shape and their simple, smoothly rounded lobes identify them as white oak leaves. But like white oak leaves in nature, Matisse's leaves are all a bit different. The multiple lobes of the leaves spread out in subtly different ways, generating a vibrant multiplicity of contrasts between the leaves. In addition, the broad and deep sinuses of the leaves create negative spaces that play leaf against the uniformly colored background. The interplay of figure and ground reveals the dynamic patterning inherent in the sinus-and-lobe shape of the individual leaves. This kind of visual play is not available in leaves of solid form, such as the tulip poplar.

Matisse has also achieved liveliness by varying the number of lobes on his leaves. Some of these structures are multiplied beyond what is found in nature, but this might be considered a reminder of the variations such leaves can achieve. Matisse has also morphed the basic leaf form to insert several human hand-like forms. Leaf Jumpers, a children's book, refers to the “stubby fingers” of the white oak leaf.

from Leaf Jumpers by Carole Gerber.     Three hand forms among Matisse's leaves

Illustrated by Leslie Evans                             “La Gerbe”, 1953

 A white oak leaf can sometimes bear a resemblance to the whole hand. The leaf below spreads its lobes from a central mass, as fingers spread from the palm. This is not a normal shape for a white oak leaf. Did Matisse find a leaf like this one? Or did the “demands” of his composition dictate the artist's departures from the basic leaf shape?