More painting with gesture, energy, and music...

Abstract painter Lynne Taetsch describes a process similar in many ways to that of Jonas Gerard. That is, she turns music up loud and just paints, using big gestures and moving to the music. It's an energetic process that is evident in the feeling of energy in the paintings themselves.

In the YouTube video "Why Non-Objective Art?", taped at a gallery talk at The Edward Hopper House Art Center in Nyack, New York, Taetsch describes how she works in layers, using methods that will be familiar to you from class. After going through the big gestural phase of the painting, she steps back to see what the painting needs. She turns it around in all four directions, not only upside down.

She talks also about how everything she sees influences her work – not only art she looks at. Colors and symbols are important to her. But what is most important to her is the experience of painting, the process itself – she has no idea, when she's beginning, of where the painting will lead her.

She also talks about how she doesn't think in words when she's painting – she thinks visually. It's the difference between getting out of our linear, logical, right-brained mode of thinking and shifting into visual, holistic, left-brained processing. Different painters have different ways of making that shift – painting to music is a good method.

It's a wonderful, thoughtful conversation about how painters paint and what goes into the process of creating art. You can also see Lynne Taetsch talk about her painting process, especially about working in left-brain mode, and abstract art in the video "Painting Abstract Art." You can find her work online both in the video "Modern Art: Paintings by Lynne Taetsch," and at her website ArtByLT.com.

Finding your focal point

The focal point should be the center of interest of your painting. Consider your subject; what do you find the most interesting? Where do you want to lead your viewer's eyes? Where do you want their eyes to rest?

The focal point of a painting is the place where the viewer's eye wants to go. The question is, is that where you want the viewer's eye to go? Is it the same place that you thought was the center of interest?

You can test this easily by turning the painting upside down (sideways works, too, as does looking at the painting in a mirror). Looking at a painting upside down takes everything out of context. Instead of seeing objects - a tree, a river, a couch, an apple, a person - you see things in terms of shape, value (light and dark), and color.

A big part of making a painting work is finding a way to lead the viewer into the painting, and to the focal point - making it the painting's center of interest. Finding your focal point is the first step.