“Rooftops”

by Emma Sartwell

The paint and pigment in “Rooftops” describe an undulating sinusoidal terra cotta rooftop against a quintessentially blue Provence sky.
As much as I adore these things, as vividly as I can envision myself indefinitely studying the visual nuances of the organic architecture and the blindingly indigo background, they aren’t what the piece is about.
“Rooftops” is one of ten in a series about process, about medium, about immediacy and boldness, about delving into the freshness of experiencing a specific atmosphere for the first time.
Compared to my familiar aesthetic and conceptual experiences with urban and suburban settings, where the architecture is in direct juxtaposition to any organic form, where the lighting, the colors, the lines, and the shapes are increasingly synthetic, the town of Aix en Provence seemed a mere continuation of the color-rich earth upon which it was built, and its growth and adaptations were more of a priority than the sterility and perfection which, in my experience, were so often the goal. This change in atmosphere called for a similar change in medium. Water-based, homogenized oils, brushes with artificial fibers, and spotless, uniform gessos no longer seemed appropriate. While there certainly are artificial elements in “Rooftops,” I tried to break from what I was used to, introducing natural pigments to a limited acrylic palette of titanium white and Payne’s gray and allowing my brush to accumulate paint organically, until, after three weeks, it could have been excavated, each emerging layer revealing a painting or a day, a thought or a journey.
The palette neighboring the rooftops plays just as important a role as the rooftops themselves, both formally and conceptually. The palette is a record of the experience of painting, of each neuron fired, each trial and error and decision that led to the glimpse of a scene beside it.
But the painting certainly isn’t secondary to the palette. Without the painting, the palette would be, in the worst scenario, contrived – more a product than a recorded process, some sort of coy gimmick- or, in the best scenario, an incomplete representation of the creative process. Decisions must be made in a process; some elements will be discarded or manipulated, some will be kept and used to express or convey or relieve or explore.
Mounting the series proved difficult because while I was trying to solidify the idea that the whole piece, including the palettes and the masking tape and the paint and the top-heavy brush (which got its own mount), were intentional and finished and deserving of being matted and shown, I also had to consider that by matting them, the mats became integral to the work, defining how it would be perceived. I tried to choose a natural fiber that would play off the earthy colors and gritty textures of the pigments but wouldn’t overwhelm what it was framing.
“Rooftops” was finished the day I painted it and again the day I completed the series and again the day they were matted, but I only felt truly finished with the process when I saw all ten pieces and the brush, consolidated by the burlap, together, hanging in symbol (or a scapegoat) of my immediate suburban existence, which had played just as important a role in the work as anything else: a Starbucks.
The first phase of making “Rooftops” had been reacting to my new visual and visceral stimuli, enunciating the differences between my familiar surroundings and my current ones. The process was fast and unhesitant and exhilarating. The second phase was longer and less conscious, harder and more resisted, but no less satisfying or significant to the work; I needed to reconcile my two experiences, letting the new conceptual and emotional and visual information sink in and ingratiate itself with the rest of my experiences and exposures. The self I see in “Rooftops” and the self I see in the Starbucks wall it hung upon needed to mingle and learn to coexist. “Rooftops” is about process, and while the pallette and the tape and the etcetera directly represent the process of painting, they are also a representation of all of the other processes that “Rooftops” went through at my hand and that I went through at the hand of “Rooftops.”