Artist's Statement:
This week’s painting might seem to be a detail from a much larger work – that is “a small part of a work of art, enlarged to show a close-up of its features.” In fact, this painting stands alone – though it is very small (5 x 5 inches).
Painting on a very small surface raises a set of special issues, including the need for greater precision in fine details, especially in depicting the interplay between light and shadow. Yet despite the special challenges, small paintings provide me respite from the pressure I sometimes load on myself when doing large paintings.
A small painting requires just as much care and precision, but, because the physical context is so much smaller, errors are less concerning and fixes more easily made. And sometimes, beauty and meaning emerge from just a few brush strokes.
Oil on Wood Panel
5 x 5 x 1.25 in
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays, First Series, ch.12
“I like smallness. I like the perverse audacity of someone aiming tiny.” Kyo Maclear, Birds Art Life: A Year of Observation Canadian novelist
Smallness is subversive, because smallness can creep into smaller places and wreak transformation at the most vulnerable, cellular level. In a time when largeness is threatening to topple us, I wish to remember and praise the beauty of smallness, in order to banish the Goliath of loneliness.
Sarah Ruhl, 100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write poet, essayist, playwright
The most difficult thing is not the belief in the infinite. No. The most difficult thing of all is to believe that the infinite would be so grand and gracious as to reside in the smallness of us. That is what requires the greatest faith.
Craig D. Lounsbrough, The Eighth Page: A Christmas Journey author, life coach
Art as an Oasis™
Art as an Oasis is a series of occasional postings from the art of Carrie Kleinberger
providing a temporary respite from both mundane and monumental cares
complimented by words of wisdom from a diversity of others.