Shaylee Hall: Fragments of Color
I paint from life to observe the world in front of me, though these paintings are not just records of places and people. I originally wanted each piece to represent the expression of a single emotion as I was feeling it; however, I found when working on a painting over time, it was difficult to return to what I was feeling when I started. Rather than fight this and force an emotion each moment I painted, I realized I could let the painting change as I changed, that the artwork could become an expression of these evolving feelings.
Color is essential to my process. I look for and capture a great variety of color by noticing shifting hues, temperature, and lighting, as well as how colors are relative to each other and how they relate to the environment I am observing. My process is intuitive and responsive: I pick a color that I see and emphasize it by laying it down with a palette knife, often leaving it as it is, open and unblended.
Viewed up close, the colors of these paintings combat each other, chaotic and incongruous like layers of contradictory feelings. From afar, they are whole and harmonious like understanding a person shaped by their experiences and feelings. I vary the textures of brushwork, choppy and thick, blended and thin. One layer is scraped away and then another is added. These built-up fragments of color and abstractions depict a changing environment that reflects myself as a dynamic, changing person, never exactly the same, when I return to a painting.
