Art Museum Visit - Justin Coleman

For my museum visit, I decided to go to the local Arlington Museum of Art. I had never been there before, but had heard that they featured many nice pieces of art. Luckily while browsing their collection, I stumbled across a piece, “Untitled”, by Kelsey White which really caught my attention.
I believe the thing that really made this piece stand out to me are the lines and shapes used throughout the composition. The painter uses small and large circles and a number of varying lines to portray the image. The varying thickness and length of the lines mixed with the changing size of the circles keeps the painting from every feeling ‘boring’. The thing I liked most about this picture is that it can be two different things in my mind. Some people might see some very abstract flowers from a top down perspective while others might see eyeballs. I can see both and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out which one I felt was the intended result. To me, depending on which interpretation I go by, the circular shapes can be either beautiful - flowers, or grotesque - eyeballs. These geometric shapes are clearly meant to be the focus of the painting and the source of discussion around the painting. They are very intentional indeed.
At the same time that the painter is drawing you in with a number of lines and geometric shapes, she is also creating a very claustrophobic painting. There is hardly any negative or empty space in the painting. But by painting it in the way that she did, she made it project out in an almost three-dimensional way. Some of the circles appear to be coming out at you. She also uses colors a great amount in this painting. We see many contemporary colors; everything from light and dark blues to oranges, reds, greens, yellows and blacks. I believe this painting was made with light-hearted intentions because of the fact that she did choose to use very bright, brilliant colors. The only darker color used is black and its main purpose is to serve as outlines to the many shapes. Interestingly though, the painter used many lines, shapes and colors but apparently chose to forego any implied light source in the picture. It is purely bright because of the bright colors contained within it. There is no one point at which light seems to be strongest or weakest.
The balance in this painting seems to be an all-over type of balance. It feels balanced not because their are two equal halves, but because the whole canvas is dominated by shapes and lines. As for emphasis, your eye tends to be drawn first to the near center of the canvas. This is likely because the largest circles lay in this general area. There are also some of the brighter colors, yellow, orange and pink in this vicinity. Circles are the item most frequently repeated in this painting. The rhythm doesn’t seem to be in any pattern, but does create a decorative ornamentation and act as a unifying source.
The painter seems to have used oil-based paints for this piece and it doesn’t seem to have affected her stylistic choices much, if at all. She varied her line thicknesses, drew large and small circles and used a wide variety of colors. In person, this piece was extremely shiny, which likely lead to my eye constantly coming back to it. And because this is such a recent piece, the paints had not had time to fade and were likely as brilliant and vibrant as the day she painted them.