Susan Reinhard wrote: I’m loving Zarowsky’s use of colors.

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lido bikes 107 16″ x 12″ Mixed media (watercolour painted directly on absorbent ground on gessoed birch panel) `

continued breakdown of boundaries between art and the everyday…

‘a painting about a bicycle is always about a bicycle, but it is no more about a bicycle than it is about a brush stroke or the physicality of the paint’…….with apologies, paraphrasing Jasper Johns here)

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lido bikes 108 14.25″ x 15.25″  Mixed media (watercolour painted directly on absorbent ground on gessoed birch panel) `

Susan Reinhard Someone on my Timeline said that you are using the blacks and whites like Van Gogh bringing out the colors. Quite a compliment.

Bob Carl Susan, I think it’s his use of black, white, and grey that enhances the colors. It’s kind of a “cloisone” technique that Van Gogh used too.

A thank you to both Susan and Bob, for their complimentary comments regarding this latest of bicycle paintings, although i still have both my ears and on the insane-o-meter am just a tad less insane than Vinny was…although there is still time….

Equally, i do not use black(s) – all my darks are  `greens“, but that is neither here nor there….

i have no problem with comparisons between my work and Van Goghs’; it adds to those already made by others between my painting style and that of David Milne. i keep finding myself in good company.

Bob`s second comment got me to get my book on Vinny out and to reread sections on cloisonism

‘Cloisonnism is another name for Synthetism, a movement begun by Paul Gauguin and his Pont-Aven buddies.’  (Beth Gersh-Nesic)  which is not exactly accurate,  first, as the origins lie with Louis Anquetin and in essays by his friend Edouard Dujardin and secondly as it evolvingly was aligned with symbolism more to accommodate Gaugain than anything else.(see Bogonila Welsh-Oveharov’s book on Vinny  & the birth of cloisonism)

‘ the key characteristics of cloisosnism, according to Gersh-Nesic, are; Flat, broad areas of color divided by black or darker lines that create contours.“

`The painter Anquetin traces his design with enclosing lines, within which he places his various colour tones juxtaposed in order to produce the desired sensation of general colouration“ (Welssh-Oveharov)

Armed with the above descriptions, i can see how someone might think i fall into the cloisonist camp, except that my process is unlike Anquetins`;  i neither trace any design with enclosing lines nor place colour within these same lines. Some of my work has a hard edge reminiscent of woodcuts – ( i am fond of Walter Phillips work;  he produced wonderful colour woodcuts after he left the group of seven ) which appears in parts of any – most paintings, as a dark outline, and which, added at the end, as the last part of the process of working the painting serves to give an added intensity to the work to further express just how i strongly feel about the idea being painted. It is a stylistic point which looking back now, gives my work a unique look all its own.   Micheal.