Mark Rothko

Markus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz was an American artist of Russian-Jewish descent. Later shortened to Mark Rothko as an alias for his art. He was a painter, and his creations are primarily abstract-expressionist by categorisation. Although, Rothko himself refused to adhere to any particular art movement.

The paintings, although relatively simple, are very large in size. He states that his intentions are to be intimate and human with his art, and to achieve this, the pictures must be large enough to be "in it" during its creation. On the contrary, he says that to paint a small picture is to "place yourself outside your experience."

I found this very interesting, as I have always created small scale art, and enjoyed doing so. Having said this, my art tends to involve much, much more detail than Rothko's, and to do so on a scale as large as this, would be much less enjoyable (at least, to me personally). I can see why Rothko would enjoy working on a large scale when creating the minimalist art that he did, as the large scale would allow him the room to move freely and create striking brush strokes with reckless abandon. I think that I would enjoy the process, too. But I cannot bring my self to enjoy the art style, unfortunately. I enjoy art with visible detail and narrative far too much.

What I AM interested in, though, and what I DO enjoy, is his use of colour and the schemes within them. From the research I have conducted, I have learnt that Rothko suffered with some mental health issues. Several layers of depression, brought on by immigrant poverty, two failed marriages, and the impact of WW1 and 2. This spiral unfortunately ended in a dramatic suicide at age 67, in 1970.

His interests, (likely spurred by his ill health,) were based around the expression of human emotion.
To do this with such a minimalist style required a great knowledge of colour, and how it affected the humans around him. The rich colours of his darker pieces were sure to evoke an emotional response. Rothko speaks of it here:

"... expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions… The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them."

I can imagine his thought process, especially if he was in a bad state of mind. Negativity, emotional unrest and anger resonate with darker colours, and shades of red. The dirty red could possibly relate back to his memories of war (both of them).

I admire his use of colour, and his vast understanding of it. Perhaps, it was not only that he was aware of the colours and how to use them, but that he felt them.
I would like to explore his use of colour in my own work. In no way will I plan to imitate his style in my final outcome, but I would like to be able to learn from his processes.

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Intentions:

I am in a much safer state of mind than Rothko ever seemed to be, and I intend to stay that way. My mindset naturally reflects in my art. Whereas Rothko pressed on tragedy and negativity, I value what is positive, what is free of hate and what is beautiful. This, and how they make people feel as a result. I would like to impose this positive feeling onto whoever may witness my art.

I am looking at nature and the colours within it. The naturally occurring colour schemes of nature naturally make me feel calm and happy. Negativity drains from my mind, when pleasant colours are infront of me. Because of this, I will be using palettes directly from nature to create transcriptions and developments.

My own gathered images.

Out of all of my developments, this is probably the one most like Rothko's works. The colours, although natural and picked directly from the image, are mostly neutral or warm. They remind me of an old film, or vintage photography. The series of greys seem like a variation of tone, whereas the brown is like sepia.
(this is my least favourite development of them all)

This development comes from an image that is much more colourful, and the feel of nature is present in it. The green and brown especially compliment each other as they would do in nature, whereas the yellow, purple and pink add the colour pops that I so admire. These shades are plucked directly from the photograph using the colour picker tool.

This piece was also created using nothing but the colour picker tool to create my colour palette. The colours in the painting are identical to the brightest points on the photograph, but despite this, the painting looks somehow underwhelming in comparison. Having said this, the photograph was taken under artificial light in a museum. I can understand why this would mute the colours photographically. But optically,  to me, the colours of this butterfly seem much brighter than they are.

I would have loved to see this butterfly in its full glory in the sunshine, where the natural light can compliment the natural brightness of the colours.

In an effort to get a ,more colourful idea of the colour scheme that the butterfly may have in the wild, I adjusted the saturation of the two images. I thought that perhaps the image would have a more pleasant affect on the viewer, with brighter colours to behold. I think that it has done nothing but the opposite, making it look unnatural, forced and rather ugly. It is a strain on my eyes personally, which is not what I was going for. I think that perhaps it would be better to take inspiration from the butterfly, rather than copying it directly.

This is the product of my taking inspiration, rather than completely and blindly copying. I like this much better for several reasons. The colour scheme is calming, and easy on the eye. Not too bright, but not too dull, and it still looks plausible and believable that these colours exist in nature. The softer edges make the overall piece much more delicate, which I enjoy. The harsher lines between the colours give a stark juxtaposition that I think works well. This is perhaps my favourite piece of the developments I have made.

I also experimented with this technique, using images of nature that were taken by professional photographers. I thought that perhaps it was my photography skills (or the lack of them) that lead to my muted colour schemes. Although, having used this image that seems very vivid as a starting point to pick colours from, it seems that it was not to do with my photographs, and that the colours just react differently in different orders, on different backgrounds. This is an interesting concept.

I thought that a professionally taken image of a peacock feather would be a brilliant idea, as surely the colours would be very vivid and beautiful naturally. The colours in my painting are not quite as bright as what our eyes makes them out to be in the photograph. Regardless, I did hav fun with this piece, and made a point to adapt Rothko's style by using curving, positive lines.

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Though I have already explored Rothko's use of colour, I decided to explore his practice by mimicking it. With real paint, with a real paintbrush, on a large scale (at least, larger than I would usually use).

Rothko's paintings are usually huge enough to take up an entire wall, but I neither have the resources or room to do this. So, I found the biggest piece of paper I could.

roughly A2 size

I chose my colour scheme - Rothko was a fan of red in his paintings,
so I chose to incorporate red with yellow in order to make a gradient of sorts that could mimic a sunset
(using the colours of nature again).

I had small tubes of paint, so squeezed them directly onto the paper in squares and lines that I could work with with a dry brush.

Then, I started smearing them all together in rough squares. The motion of the brush
was wide and repetitive, and seeing the paint all smear together was very satisfying.

The process was therapeutic, and I can see why Rothko found it soothing on a much larger scale.
It could be considered almost meditative, as you lose yourself in the motion of the paint as you work.

I didn't wash my brush at all. I started with the lightest colours first, then moved on to the dark. This meant that as I was painting the dark red, bits of yellow smeared into it from my brush. It added an extra flare and depth that I didn't expect.

I added a dark blue around the edges of the colour that I had already laid down. I intended to smear them together in a similar way to the lighter colours, merging lightly with the red and yellow whilst they were still wet to create a soft gradient, almost like that of a sunset (which is what I was going for in the first place).