Driveway Paintings #12 3'x5' Acrylic on Canvas
The Driveway Paintings series began on a warm winter day in January 2010. To work on multiple large canvases simultaneously, I set up studio outside in my driveway. Strong winds moving the bare trees of the forest surrounding my driveway inspired the spontaneous movement, loose brush strokes, expressive line work and shapes of the backgrounds.
In the Driveway Paintings, the circle is both separate from and a part of the rest of the painting, representing how we feel and live as human beings in the physical world. We are a part of the whole yet often feel separated and a sense of disconnect. The circle represents wholeness, completeness, entirety, totality, unity, fullness, and a repetitive pattern. These paintings give us a visual reminder, revealing and depicting that we are not separate, but live in the midst of the rest of the Universe or canvas and are connected on many levels, in many layers.
Circular shape is a contradiction to the hard edged rectangular form of the canvas. The circle represents an unbroken pattern. Like the Medicine Wheel, taught in the Native American tradition, the circle stands for the circle of life, with an endless flow. We go around and around again and again; repeating, relearning, growing, evolving and gaining wisdom. The rectangular shape of the canvas is a defined hard-edged boundary suggesting limitation or an end. Circle presents an opening, a porthole, a point of entry, an invitation to enter and explore the vast mystery of what lies within the opening, revealing spaciousness, opportunities and worlds within worlds.
Driveway Paintings in the early stages
Setting up for Driveway Paintings
Ann Etheridge Studios 