Not all sections of a surface are equal. Movement, space, and placement can be used to suggest time. Within the composition we can infer a sequence, a past, and a future. In part, this is due to how we read. Generally, we read top to bottom, and left to right. Within a scene in a painting we often interpret things happening at the top or left side as beginning, and as they move towards the lower and the right side, they are perceived as ending. Things happening in the lower right side tend to be perceived as happening later in time. Spacing and placement can also can suggest how much future or past there is outside of the immediate scene of the painting. This isn’t true for all paintings, but it does happen in some, and you can use it in yours.
For example, the painting Christina’s World by Wyeth suggests a moment of time in the subject’s future. We connect the figure (left) to the house (right), and the tension is in the suggested attempted movement from the figure through the blank space, as the figure pulls towards the house.
In the painting below by Harry Franklin Waltman, the action has mostly already happened (represented by the figure on the left), and the figure on the right is at his end. Both Christina and the fencer are in peril, but Christina, the figure on the left side, will extend into prolonged suffering, while the fencer, the figure on the right edge of the canvas, suggests the story is at its end.
Hope Gangloff is an American painter living and working in New York City. Born 1974, she is one year older than me. The picture of her painting in her studio, black overalls and climbing on a ladder, my mother mistook for me in my studio, black overalls, climbing on a ladder. The patterns in these …
She studied the pattern and repetition of the pieces. She examined each character in the painting, and figured out the bride was the one with her orange hair out, and in black. Black clothing dye, as our resident textiles expert Lucy Garnett points out, would have been very expensive at that time, so appropriate for …
[image_with_animation image_url=”11664″ alignment=”” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] For the purpose of torturing my Still Lifes Class with a level of realism few on the planet can reproduce, here are some Still lifes by Israel Hershberg. Israel Hershberg lives and works in Jerusalem, Israel. While he is known primarily as a landscape and figurative painter, his realist …
High Flight Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there, I’ve chased …
Left vs Right: sense of time in composition
Not all sections of a surface are equal. Movement, space, and placement can be used to suggest time. Within the composition we can infer a sequence, a past, and a future. In part, this is due to how we read. Generally, we read top to bottom, and left to right. Within a scene in a painting we often interpret things happening at the top or left side as beginning, and as they move towards the lower and the right side, they are perceived as ending. Things happening in the lower right side tend to be perceived as happening later in time. Spacing and placement can also can suggest how much future or past there is outside of the immediate scene of the painting. This isn’t true for all paintings, but it does happen in some, and you can use it in yours.
For example, the painting Christina’s World by Wyeth suggests a moment of time in the subject’s future. We connect the figure (left) to the house (right), and the tension is in the suggested attempted movement from the figure through the blank space, as the figure pulls towards the house.
In the painting below by Harry Franklin Waltman, the action has mostly already happened (represented by the figure on the left), and the figure on the right is at his end. Both Christina and the fencer are in peril, but Christina, the figure on the left side, will extend into prolonged suffering, while the fencer, the figure on the right edge of the canvas, suggests the story is at its end.
Related Posts
Hope Gangloff
Hope Gangloff is an American painter living and working in New York City. Born 1974, she is one year older than me. The picture of her painting in her studio, black overalls and climbing on a ladder, my mother mistook for me in my studio, black overalls, climbing on a ladder. The patterns in these …
Dancing Cod-pieces
She studied the pattern and repetition of the pieces. She examined each character in the painting, and figured out the bride was the one with her orange hair out, and in black. Black clothing dye, as our resident textiles expert Lucy Garnett points out, would have been very expensive at that time, so appropriate for …
Israel Hershberg’s Quiet Still Lifes
[image_with_animation image_url=”11664″ alignment=”” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] For the purpose of torturing my Still Lifes Class with a level of realism few on the planet can reproduce, here are some Still lifes by Israel Hershberg. Israel Hershberg lives and works in Jerusalem, Israel. While he is known primarily as a landscape and figurative painter, his realist …
Flying Machines
High Flight Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there, I’ve chased …