Painting Series Using Hubble Images & Geometry (20+paintings)

My “Perspectives” series deals with different ways of seeing things. We have only lived our own experiences and see the world through our own tuned lenses tailored to our individual brains. Sometimes that makes it difficult to see something from another point of view.

The series starts simply with a few colorful paintings of space images from the Hubble telescope, then I begin to slice up and manipulate more images I found in the NASA gallery. First, it’s stripes, then to triangles, pyramids, tetrahedrons, an octahedron, an icosahedron, and even a stellated dodecahedron. I take an element from the previous drawing idea and explore it differently in the next, and sometimes each of those takes in another direction and often gain in complexity. Sometimes I would make a smaller piece larger, sometimes I rework the same shape, or maybe I use a specific technique in another way. I'd change the same reference into multiple hues, or overlay geometric patterns. Some have dead ends, and I jump around a bit, but the last painting could not exist without every painting between. With this unique art, I hope to reveal a bit about how I try to see beyond my own perspective to better understand others but to also show a bit about my creative process of pushing ideas. Preceding the title is a number which represents its order in the series followed by the name of the subject of my reference. The last piece of the series also integrates my image of Rocky Mountain National Park to introduce a bit of my perspective, and its title reflects that.

With all these, I attempt to add some kind of illusory effect because things aren’t always as they seem. Besides my use of vivid colors to create vibrancy, there are several pieces in the series that can be looked at in multiple ways. For example, the shape may appear two-dimensional in one instance, but in another glance, it has a three-dimensional appearance. So many times, I’ve been humbled in life because I am certain something is one way just to be proven that my senses and logic are not always right. If we are aware of our limited senses and awareness, it makes it easier to be open to seeing things from multiple perspectives. I often wonder if my viewers first see these galaxy artworks flat or more dimensional, or if the stars and space dust seems to be within or behind the geometry. Even literally at different angles some of these pieces can be seen in another way because they're packed with metallic paints that have a changing sheen depending on where you’re looking from. A handful also has glitter that appears to have sparkling stars when they catch the light just right.

In all of this geometrical manipulation, I chose the cosmos as my reference because the idea of space brings the human race together. We are all in this with each other on our pale blue dot, and we have so much more in common than we do differently because of it. On a planet full of such strife as we continue to pack the surface, I think it’s more important than ever to try to be open and understanding.

I chose to share my favorite paintings that best represented my vision. To see the full series and the paintings still available, visit christiesnelson.

Thanks for looking!!

Christie

More info: christiesnelson.com