I’ve long believed that random color combinations are an unfailing key to artistic inspiration. I’ve used everything from having an “art lottery” format—where I’ve assigned numbers to a chart of colors, and picked the numbers at random using a bingo drum (a long story!)—to using random.org’s random number generator to select CMYK values.

Last night I bumped into ColorSchemer’s ColorSchemer Studio software app, which is a nifty tool for building color schemes. It also has a randomize feature (exactly what I was looking for), which assigns groups of colors according to triads, tetrads, etc.

After messing with the randomize feature for far too long, I have decided once and for all that random color combinations can’t be trusted, because of the eye-irritant stuff that they yield most of the time.

Examples:

Back in the day, when I deliberately used multiple discordant colors in one painting, this a randomization strategy would prove very handy. But now I prefer schemes that are more direct—I leave less to chance.

While I have eschewed color randomization, I will say that I have very fond of an another app made by ColorSchemer—a free app, at that—called Color Pix. This tool lets you read the hex numbers & CMYK values of anything on your screen. Now that’s a recipe for color success.

Back to work for me!

Wishing you happiness and the causes of happiness,
Grant

Here for you is some fresh-off-the-griddle goodness, my latest paintings in the Süfnex series. Just put the finishing touches on them, as a matter of fact.

From left to right are Süfnex Seibu 4, Süfnex Solaris, and Süfnex Seibu 3. I painted them Sunday (Apr 27) through this evening (Apr 29) … in about 54 hours.

Each of these recent explorations of minimal art measures 10 inches square and is acrylic on canvas, as usual.

Keeping the creative energies going, flowing through my speakers over the past couple of days have been these remarkable recordings:

• Dandelion Gum by Black Moth Super Rainbow. Utterly phenomenal!
• Pop Artificiel by Lassigue Bendthaus … which was brought on by the aforementioned album.

Also, I am reading Minimalism: Origins by Edward Strickland … a very well-written survey of how minimalist visual art, music, etc. came about in the United States in the mid-20th century. I also have my hands on a pile of CSS books, because I’m getting ready to redesign wiggz.com. The functionality will remain the same … just need to start making it look a bit jazzier.

Other from that, things are going well. Can’t wait to cook up more new designs and paintings soon. Until then, I wish you happiness and the causes of happiness.

—Grant Wiggins

Taking a pause from the Space Loops canvases, I’m trying my hand at remixing a painting I made in February 2004, called Süfnex. It was one of the first minimal paintings I made, veering toward minimal art after years of pop art. After all, I figure, if musicians can remix their own tracks, so artists can remix their own paintings.

The project is a rethinking of the Süfnex design, but with a red, green and blue color scheme—one that struck me when I rediscovered an image of a phone card sporting the mascot of the Japanese baseball team Seibu Lions. But the red, green and blue scheme is also the turf of Ellsworth Kelly, one of my favorite painters. I decided to amp up my paints a bit, throwing in fluorescents into the mix, if only for a placebo effect. (If I think the paints look brighter, they must be brighter!)

Below, clockwise from upper left, are: the Seibu Lions phone card; the original Sufnex painting; and four variations of the design.

I’ve really enjoyed the process so far. It’s brought my mind back to what inspired me so long ago. Plus, it’s a series, a form of production of which I’ve grown more fond. A lot of minimalist painters of the 1960s worked in series, propelled by a similar impulse.

Lawrence Alloway—who in 1966 organized a show at the Guggenheim called “Systemic Painting,” which included minimalist painters Frank Stella, Agnes Martin, and others—described the serial process in minimal painting as “One-Image art.” Read the full essay here. Alloway explains the serial approach to minimal painting in a very powerful way, in a way that really resonates with me, as follows:

The artist who uses a given form beings each painting further along, deeper into the process, than an expressionist, who is, in theory at least, lost in beginning; all the One-Image artist has to have done is to have painted his earlier work. One-Image art abolishes the lingering notion of History Painting, that invention is the test of the artist. Here form becomes meaningful, not because of ingenuity or surprise, but because of repetition and extension. The recurrent image is subject to continuous transformation, destruction and reconstruction; it requires to be read in time as well as space. In style analysis we look for unity within variety; in One-Image art we look for variety within conspicuous unity. The run of the image constitutes a system, with limits set up by the artist himself, which we learn empirically by seeing enough of the work. Thus the system is the means by which we approach the work of art. When a work of art is defined as an object we clearly stress its materiality and factualness, but its repetition, on the basis, returns meaning to the syntax.

On that note, I will leave you with an image of work in progress—taken in my studio this evening:

Thanks for reading,
Grant Wiggins

Here are pics of the latest in the Space Loop series of modern paintings, produced on Thursday, April 10 and Friday, April 11:

SL0612D30 (30 inches square; acrylic on canvas)

SL0612CX10 (10 inches square; acrylic on canvas)

The latter (chartreuse) piece is an alternate design of the Space Loop series, as noted in my previous post. Felt like I had to paint it anyway, if only as an experiment. It’s now available for sale in the store.

Since then, I have been developing a new set of sketches involving a painting I made four years ago, called Süfnex. I look forward to revealing those sketches within the next few days.

I’ve also been brainstorming titles for new work, whether they’re prints, paintings, etc. Some names: Phratophir, Biyuvial, Ostroddol, Etcholxen, Exubeix. There are others, but I will spare you of them! The Basque language is particularly fascinating, and ripe with points of inspiration, as demonstrated by the newspaper Berria.

Otherwise, I have been doing quite a bit of gardening lately, before the Arizona sun increases the degree of difficulty on such activity. Gardening is much like painting, I have found, because it’s very meditative. I started a compost pile in late December, and I look forward to starting a raised garden this summer.

On that note, I wish you happiness and causes of happiness. Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,
Grant Wiggins

This afternoon, my first Space Loop painting evolved out of concept form, into canvas form:

I am encouraged by this afternoon’s result. I look forward to continuing the series in the near future.

I have to admit that spent a seemingly ridiculous amount of time trying to get the stripes “right” for this series. Hours adjusting the curves, undoing those adjustments, bending the curves some more, comparing them to the original sketch, measuring the distances between stripes, rethinking all of my edits, starting over, etc.

After arriving at two designs, all of the editing came down to one big “hunch,” to borrow a term used by Frederick Hammersley, one of my favorite painters. One composition looked more dynamic. But the other composition looked slightly antisocial, but in a good way. I chose the former.

But would anyone know the difference?

Decide for yourself: Left to right are original sketch (December 2006), the more “dynamic” version (from three weeks ago) and a “rethinking” of that version (last night):

As I was going through this process, I was reminded of the saying “Too much tuning, not enough music.” I do find myself deliberating, wondering, and doubting my designs perhaps a bit too much. However, I am trying to be more mindful of overthinking my designs. I have to be able to cut off my thought process and say “Time’s up. What’s your decision?” That’s where the hunch comes in.

Anyway, today was a great day. Beautiful weather and good music. Among the many albums on the stereo today were:

Animism by Expo 70 (mind-blowing space/ethereal/droning/classification-defying stuff)

Back from the Futer by Aavikko (brilliant 8-bit Casio tunes from Finland)

Affenstunde by Popol Vuh (a classic from the dawn of the digital era)

I highly recommend any of these albums. On that note, I am heading back to the easel. Thank you for reading.

- Grant Wiggins

Something incredibly cool has arrived in my mailbox. Make that under my mailbox—it was too big to fit.

I just received a couple of copies of Passages, a collection of winning entries in the Maricopa Community Colleges Creative Writing Competition. On the cover is a tightly cropped image of a painting I made back in late 06, titled Still Life with Inverted Florida Maritime.

Left: The cover of Passages. Right: A photo of my 2006 painting Still Life with Inverted Florida Maritime.

Above: An inventive way of introducing the Essay section.

What’s really cool is that the book’s designer, Janet Sieradzki, isolated elements of the original design and incorporated it through the rest of the book. (I provided her with the original Illustrator file.) In other words, in the Fiction section, you’ll see a group of diamonds; Essay features a diagonal borrowed from the design’s stripes.

It’s fascinating to see how someone else can run with my work and make it new. I see my own work in a completely new way. And it’s refreshing to see my work in a completely unexpected context—a college writing contest.

Big ups to Janet Sieradzki for doing something new with my design! Nicely done, Janet!

Lots of cool art happened and good laughs were had on Friday when I paid a visit on my old friends Oliver and Spencer Hibert. Because we don’t hang out nearly enough, we’ve decided to try to get together to paint / draw / doodle / hang out once a week—or whenever convenient. I think I painted 12 hours on Friday: five before I went over to Spencer’s and seven when I was there.

One of the things I was working on was this pattern painting (at right), which is almost done. I had no plan for which color combo to use, so I laid out a few choices and had my amigos choose for me. (Have to leave some room for randomness!) Originally Oliver picked out orange, brown and light blue; but after I explained that I’ve used that combo far too many times, I switched it up to red, brown, and light blue. Long story short, it turned out to be an eyesore, in a good way.

But it was really good to get caught up with Oliver and Spencer, bringing our energy together. Oliver and I have been through so much together—highs (Arizona Biennials) and lows (the disintegration of The TRA25 Capsule experiment)—and I’ve really enjoyed getting to know Spencer better. Our work has evolved into very different spaces over the past two or three years, but we’ve only learned from that.

It was all high comedy, punctuated by pizza from Hungry Howie’s. (Q.: “What’s for dinner?” A.: “What’s on the doorknob?”) Just kind of underscores how important it is for artists to have other artists as friends. Especially here in the outskirts of metropolitan Phoenix, where the culture for art is pretty … well … alienating.

One of the things we talked about was originality … how almost impossible it is to do something absolutely new anymore. Why burn yourself out trying to be new? Instead, just be yourself, and make what you like.

Can’t wait to get back together with them again, which may happen Tuesday evening.

Spencer at left, Oliver at right, doing what they do.

I took some time this afternoon to upload a new group of prints to the store. Some of the new prints are part of the Space Loops series I wrote about in my last post.

The store now has 14 prints and 6 paintings. As far as prints are concerned, I’ve tried to blend minimal “hard-edge” designs with the funkier stuff. Some prints are just ideas on paper; they may become paintings, they may not. Time will tell.

I’m enjoying making the prints—testing color combinations, giving designs a life beyond the screen. The process is liberating. Photographing them is a bit trickier, but I’m not giving up!

Thanks for checking things out . . . until next time—
Grant Wiggins

I have my mind set on a new series of paintings, a series of “space loops.” The original concept for this series entered my mind in December 2006. I produced one study, but shelved the idea. The painting FF0000uturo took its place.

Now the loops are back. Below are just a few sketches. The color combinations are seemingly infinite. But that’s what makes this a series.

As I think about it, the loops kind of remind me of the space colony illustrations that NASA produced in the 1970s, as shown here. Those captivated me as a kid! People living inside giant cellophane tires filled with synthetic rivers and forests … and weirdo architecture! But the space loop composition arose independently of those; I mean, I didn’t have them in mind as I was geeking out the sketches. Guess I’ve been carrying those glorious illustrations around in my unconscious for years.

On that note, speaking of loops, I bumped into a great-looking book last night titled I Am A Strange Loop, by Douglas Hofstadter. It’s exactly about what I’ve been studying lately: the notion of self. When we refer to ourselves as “I,” what do we mean?

Lastly, yesterday on Science Friday there was a panel discussion about utility-scale solar power projects in Nevada and Arizona, which have the potential to meet all of United States’ electricity needs. The idea is this: Utility companies would shoulder the burden of investing in, and producing, large-scale solar farms out in the desert—instead of homeowners having solar panels on their rooftops. The discussion of utility-scale solar was introduced as if it were such a novel, new idea. But this morning I bumped into a speech that Isaac Asimov wrote 30 years ago, titled “Our Future in the Cosmos—Space,” in which he wrote: “If we could get millions of photovoltaic cells (a kind of silicon cell that sets up a small electric current when exposed to light) and stretch them over half of Arizona (I only mention Arizona because there is usually a lot of sunshine there), we could perhaps supply enough energy for America’s needs.”

Amazing!

Wishing you happiness and the causes of happiness
—Grant Wiggins

At long last, after an unintended two-month hiatus, I’m back at the blog. I can’t say that I’ve exactly enjoyed being away from it. After a couple of weeks, I really did start to miss posting updates on what I’m working on.

Two sketches from last weekend:

I stopped posting on accident, really, because I diverted my time toward figuring out how to get a proper online shop going. After years of wanting to get an online store going, I finally committed to it; in fact, it was my New Year’s resolution. It took a surprising amount of time to hash out the logistics. Then came the implementation; thankfully, I could rely on my friend Jason to configure the software and tie in the payment gateway—he made sure it worked. But I was not prepared for all of the fun with managing the “look and feel” of the store, from scratch. It made installing and integrating the blog software seem easy!

Anyway, I’m happy to be at this point, ready to pick up on where I was at before. I’m looking forward to getting back into the groove of sketching and painting and printing and writing and thinking—doing what I love to do, for no real reason, other than, as (I think) William Carlos Williams wrote, “I am obsessed with making.” (Was it Williams? I just searched for “I am obsessed with making” and saw loads of results involving lots of people who use the exact same phrase to express what they’re doing, which just shows how human it is to become obsessed with making!)

Speaking of making things, I can offer you the sketches of funkier designs I have in mind, shown above right, just to indicate what my brain’s been into lately. But I still can’t shake minimalism! Seems like the more elements I add to a sketch, the more intensity the overall design loses. But to try to make minimal compositions new? That’s a challenge I’ve thought about a lot lately. I can only leave that challenge unanswered … for now.

Thank you for reading.

Wishing you happiness and the causes of happiness,
—Grant Wiggins