This is the first of a new series (the paint is still wet as I write) I have tried to incorporate some of the ideas that have come up in our recent forum discussions – I am not sure how successfully (as usual the painting took over after a short while and took me with it)

Please let me know what you think of it. I won’t say too much about it at the moment other than, as usual, the compositional elements are relatively unimportant and it was painted using only three basic primaries to mix all the colours – pthalo blue, cadmium red and yellow ochre – with just a little white for mixing.
It didn’t set out to be Putist – but it may be..?

Over to you…….I will just add that I am perfectly happy with it (it wouldn’t exist if I wasn’t) so don’t suggest any changes…..I would just like to know what you think of it, and what you think it could be about.

My initial reaction is that I love it. That strong red against the blue is brilliant. Its duality is perfectly balanced. The calmness (is that’s a word) of the top half of the image is set of so well by the activity and movement of the lower half. It’s almost like two worlds but just occasionally they violently meet with magnificent results.
The composition is great with the red being the immediate focal point followed by the white highlights which join the worlds. The blue acts to rest the eye while the jutting lines excites the eye and keeps it moving around the work.
What you have created is something that will immediately catch the eye and hold it there letting the observer ponder the meaning of the mark making.

Oh and I just love the orange tones with the blue under painting peeking through, that’s just wonderful.

When we were discussing Klee I remember saying something to the effect that respect and renown enhance the ‘quality’ of an artist’s work, because the viewer is willing to contribute more to the interaction. You have reached that stage on RB. A few months back I would have passed by this thumbnail – noting another pleasant [personal to someone] abstract.
(I wonder how many masterpieces we all miss! Images on RB are like the human race – half the people that have ever been born are currently alive! – check out the sums, Malthus and geometric progression et al. Half the images I have seen in my life were in the last four months on RB).
I digress – I have studied this at length and (as usual) have grown to love it. Perhaps I need to look at Klee again!
Your sparse description didn’t reveal much – but the events of the past couple of weeks and the title help me to put ’a’ jigsaw together – but I can’t help thinking that the ‘Kafka discourse’ has possibly seen me inject all manner of unintended content. As a ‘relativist’ this should please me, but the words ‘shoehorn’, ‘facts’ and ‘theory’ keep jumping to mind!
Following ‘timeline’ it is possible to see a progression from serene calm velvet in the past to a more rocky, chaotic present.
My immediate reaction was soldiers with pikes. However I now know to search a Kafka for bones! and sure enough the helmets and faces fuse into a skeleton/spine. To the extreme left of this ‘relic’ is a commanding (power) figure who is gesticulating towards the distance. The red slash I take as some ‘blood’ symbol. The ochre shapes could be a ‘on the rocks’ metaphor or the ocean floor – but I see that as unlikely, possibly pallbearers.
I therefore see this – given the title – as an ambiguous comment on both the environment [bones of an extinct species] and the futility of human conflict [war on both the planet and other social groups].
The other possible reading is the red and the white crucifix version that is being ‘borne’ – comment on secularisation? (don’t know your religious affiliation of course…..)
And then there’s the more unlikely versions…...........
You of course will now tell us that it is just a pleasant little predominantly blue abstract!
Putist?
Naw…....... once again too Kafka-ish.
Aesthetically? – difficult not to like it…..........

This refers to the title? Yes?

Is it his stripes I see mirrored in your painting.

ps. he is a symbolic element – ie. he means something else entirely…....

You’re getting warm…....

LOL !
Wonderful interpretation Mufa – I almost wish it was the ‘right’ one!
You almost got the last bit – (hint) a sub-title could have been ‘the corpse of modernism’
(I am going to have to explain this soon or you are all going to get annoyed with me)

Marie, you still remember that!............. (took me ages, but I found her eventually!)
You do reinforce a point that Kafka makes, which is the word ‘find’. We are all studying this at length, in ‘search’ mode and it does seem to be revealing more about our individual mind-sets than the painting. I’m looking forward to a later thread when we discuss where a work of art actually resides. Is it in the creator’s perception, the physical artifact or the perception of the viewer? I go for the third option every time – but most seem reluctant to let go of the common sense option of the second. This discussion will make a good reference tool.
It doesn’t now seem to matter what Kafka eventually reveals (apart from curiosity) because we’ve all woven a personally interpreted work of art into our own subjective world.
Marie, I’m now worried because you see ‘Micmac’ in discussion threads and I can’t find her…..... I’m just not perceptive enough I guess.

Totally agree with you Marie. Subsequently, the creator is no different from any other viewer. I didn’t express it clearly enough. The first option should have been the creator’s intention.
Incidently, the second option is going to be difficult to sustain – given that we are all here discussing the electronic arrangement of coloured pixels that Kafka’s art-kit, digital camera, software, and internet connection have magically generated on our computer screens.

hope… is the backbone and and the red supposed to form a cross perhaps (as a symbol of hope), is this why you had the canvas turned 90* to start with, to paint the cross? but it woudn’t be necessary with just 3 colours to paint a cross. also, for some reason (without having any clue as to your view on religion at all Kafka) I was not expecting religious symbolism, perhaps again this is just the subjective viewer looking for/expecting the presence or in this case absence of things that reinforce her own view of the world (very far from religious in my case). hmm, also you mention the third layer as being below the others so I should probably be looking for something subtler.. although I didn’t see the shape as a cross until you mentioned hope. and the cross has fallen to the side, perhaps the fall of religion is a symbol of hope (certainly religion has been used as an excuse for all sorts of atrocities through time and in my opinion we might well be better off without major religious movements in the world!) aah, just rambling now, and probably getting off hte track of the importance of using only 3 primary colours.

Drawing conclusions from my initial thoughts about the work (which kafka previously knew about) and after reading the above comments I wanted to elaborate on what my reactions are to this wonderful and thoughtful modern painting.
As mention the spine-like element which serves as the symbolic representations of the fallen crucifix and the civilization of Man divides the painting into halves. The lower portions are of earthly coloration (from the trinity of primary colors) and have linear qualities which I perceive as being the connections and “strings” that link humanistic concepts and our affects through the passing of time. They are different ideas and historical events that cross, intersect, and bind us together in a visual way.
The large red, vertical slash (representing time) moves upwards from a solid brushstroke and dwindles and disintegrates into smaller separations of finer streaks of paint. It could be conveying the diminishing of measurable time. and how it affects the connections of Man throughout history, and the future.
The area of blues become a “heaven-like” outlook for the potentiality of our hope. I see this work as representing the separations of heaven and earth (and the past and the future), and comments on our progression towards becoming better individuals (which obviously can affect our future). We are moving forwards through time in search of restoring our hope, and it is not so much a negative connotation of human progress but an idealistic one. In kafkas creation (as a painter) he is reversing the “fall of hope”, refuting the extinction of painting, and allowing the viewer to move upwards through the blues of the work, and feel the hopeful potential that the future could have in store… Hmmmm… I’m interested in seeing what the other pieces of work could add to this first in his series… Hope you all take good care, keep painting away, and may peace be with you all-

@bites – Your intuition is worth a thousand of my words – The (my) existential core of the work is my own horror at the absurdity of the world we have created and the various ways in which we are busy destroying it. I suspect that the anxiety the painting is causing you, is your own wonderful sense of empathy ‘tuning in’ to this visceral part of my head (which can be a dark place at times)

@Robert – wonderful reading – The lower portions are of earthly coloration (from the trinity of primary colors) and have linear qualities which I perceive as being the connections and “strings” that link humanistic concepts and our affects through the passing of time. They are different ideas and historical events that cross, intersect, and bind us together in a visual way – absolutely correct.

They are the strings and threads that are the ‘Grand Narratives’ of painting and philosophy. They lead to and connect with modernism (the Thylacine/ the fallen hope of painting) the strings lash the body of modernism to the past (the land element) and prevent its movement into the future (the blue) The red is the hope (it is the enabling creative force that runs through time – it breaks through the corpse of modernism to become…..a changeling?......post-modernism?.......Putism??........something else? (we do not know…it is in the future.

So there it is – we have hit most of the buttons on this work.
I would just like to add a postscript which describes something about the method of painting I used.

When I began the work none of the above ideas were assembled in any pre-planned way. They were just a very loose jumble of things that I knew I wanted to place somehow onto the surface of a canvas. The only elements that were there at the beginning were the Thylacine skull and spine, and the fallen crucifix – I knew that I wanted to begin with that. The crucified and broken bones of an extinct marsupial became the only fixed point in the entire future of the canvas

As I mentioned right at the start of this critique, I very quickly got into a ‘free-form’ mode of working where the painting itself takes on its own life and begins to tell me where the marks and the ideas are to be placed. I begin to act and feel like a channel between the extinct and violated Thylacine and its possible future as a metaphor for modernist painting – you can see that there is a lot of room for manouver between the two! The work is done at a furious pace – paint flying everywhere!

The layers and links and connections between the ideas and the paint build as the painting progresses – there is no pre-cognition at work here. There is absolutely no consideration of composition or aesthetic effect, any that does exist is purely accidental. (or subconscious) There is no intent to have an effect on any viewer – this work exists only in its making – It may, however, become another work when different eyes view it.
(another discussion)

As soon as you mentioned it (in your earlier post) I saw it, but only after you pointed it out. Just shows that even the painter themselves is not always aware of what they are painting! More remarkble is the fact that a few years ago I did a series of illustrations of the civil war and spent weeks drawing and painting these very scenes

Here is one of the prep drawings…....spooky or what?

(subconcious?....Freud??............aaaargh!!!)