The Holy Forest is a collection of abstract paintings created by the American artist Stephen Westfall inspired by Robin Blaser’s book Holy Forest. The artist’s adherence to minimalism is what makes the painting truly remarkable and its vivid colors make it noticeable even from a far distance. Westfall was born in 1953 in New York; as a beginning artist, he studied the works of Modernist masters specializing in abstract design. In addition, Westfall also served as an assistant at Rutgers School of Visual Arts. Throughout his career as a painter, he cites the influence of Henri Matisse throughout his work; upon his immersion in the artistic field, Westfall began studying the concept of the French Fauvism and cites the influence of Henri Matisse throughout his work.
The avant-garde style of painting, Fauvism was popularized by the French artist Henri Matisse; this genre of painting pioneered the abstract expressionism’s vivid use of colors with no meaning. The Fauvism only focused on portraying kaleidoscope of colors throughout the canvas, oftentimes using polychromatic pigments or a combination of complimentary and complimentary colors which results in the clash of pigments painted using smooth, diaphanous brush strokes and involves the use of heavy bold lines that emphasize the outline of the painting’s subject. (Westfall, “Artist Statement,” paragraph 4; Westfall, “Biography,” paragraph 1).
Using this trait as his beginning style, Westfall’s collection of abstract paintings called Holy Forest incorporates the Fauvist preference towards kaleidoscopic bright colors; however the main thing that differentiates Westfall’s painting was the unity of design, an adherence to the style borrowed from the Mexican Saltillo, a design which can be seen on the tiles especially in homes with Spanish taste. One of the paintings (see fig. 1) from the Holy Forest titled Forest created in 2010 depicts intersecting rows and columns composed of squares of different colors. Although the colors resembled the pigments used by the Fauvist painters, Westfall’s painting certainly pushed the boundaries of making these pigments ‘work’ in order to create an optical illusion with reduced iconography restricting only to squares alone. The pigments create series of implied lines, which emphasize the shapes on the painting. Additionally, the alternations of pigments create established the positive and negative space; the artist also placed a small square on the center of the painting. When viewed from a far distance, the illusion of depth begins to appear as the rows of squares located inside each square seem to trick the eyes, making the painting appear as a three-dimensional painting rather than two-dimensional. However, if one would look closely on the painting, the iconography seems to shift from overlapping squares to a pyramid viewed from the top part. Changes in visual perception makes the vertex appear like the top most part of the pyramid while the four lines that converge on the middle extending outwards serves as the four corners of the pyramid while the larger squares outside resemble the cubical pyramid base.
The main reason for the painting’s successful portrayal of optical illusion comes from the influence of Minimalism. Minimalism also another avant-garde art movement of the 20th that favored the philosophy of simple iconography in visual arts; in other words, less designs and by reducing the objects to simpler geometric shapes allows the viewers’ eyes to focus on the painting which makes the illusion of depth and three-dimensionality real and creates the hypnotic effect especially when viewed for a long time. Furthermore, as a whole, the Forest reflects the abstract designs found on the Mexican inspired tiles, their unity in design creates harmonious pattern of different colors and the artist’s skillful use of vertex as a vanishing point creates the three-dimensional illusion. The painting also exhibit radial balance since all sides contain the same design and converges on the center point forming the square vertex. The brush strokes remain natural, smooth, and transparent. Colors do not have the chiaroscuro which makes them look flat. In fact, the flat colors make the hypnotic effect look real as well as the illusion of depth. Lines were straight and linear; these lines form the shapes on the painting. Like the majority of Westfall’s works, the Forest follows a solid geometrical minimalist style. The scale of one side is equal to the three sides and the colors are arranged in alternately in order to emphasize the shape of the painting. Furthermore, all the lines from the outside of each square is connected to the other squares in close proximity, therefore, this effect in pictorial overlapping creates the distinct zigzag movement on the painting.
As a conclusion, Stephen Westfall’s designs are influenced both by the Minimalist and Fauvism art movement yet these only forms the basis of the work but the true nature of the Holy Forest paintings emphasizes movement through optical illusion which tricks the eyes in perceiving three-dimensional illusion rather than two-dimensional perspective. It was the excellent manipulation of lines together with the kaleidoscopic colors contributes to the minimal abstractness of the work.
WORKS CITED
Westfall, Stephen. “Artist Statement.” n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
Westfall, Stephen. “Biography.” n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2016.
Westfall, Stephen. Forest (For Franz Marc). 2010. Painting. Lennon Weinberg Inc. Web. Mario Naves Wordpress.com. 1 May 2016.
