Abstract Oil Painting-Line and Color-Home Office -Emerging Artist Matthew Harlan

Abstract Oil Painting- Line and Color-Home Office -Emerging Artist Matthew Harlan

Line and Colors


Ellis Antiques is now representing this fabulous Los Angeles California American artist Matthew Harlan in our shop. All of his art ships directly from Los Angeles. This is an original oil painting on canvas hand done in Matthew’s studio. Matthew uses high quality oil paints and employs techniques to ensure that his work will live on for years to come Painting has a protective varnish.
Started in January of 2020, this painting served as an additional example of a work inspired by my continued fascination with abstract geometric forms. Throughout the early parts of my artistic journey, I spent much time exploring different ways of expressing and communicating my thoughts and feelings through geometrically inspired shapes. Each new canvas was an experiment in manipulating the colors, edges and overall forms to portray the effects that I was looking for and also to discover new truths about the medium itself.

One of the main themes I attempted to explore with this particular painting was how imperfect shapes and irregular edges of the topmost paint layer occupy space and compete for attention with the more simple shapes and softer edges of the background. Do the irregular edges draw your attention over the crisp clean edges? Are you captured by the vivid colors and soft edges of the background or do the sharp edges and irregular forms of the foreground command your eyes more strongly? Something this painting also revealed to me was how certain anglular forms and combinations of colors could elicit a whole host of emotions and feelings from the viewer.  I’ve explored this concept further in several other paintings.

Gazing carefully at this piece, some people tell me they see food or that the combination of colors within this painting makes them hungry. Others have noted they see industrial like forms. One of the things that I always enjoy about creating these types of abstract geometric paintings is that you can continually make new visual discoveries each time that you look at it. Since it’s inception, this painting has kept me busy noticing all sorts of little details that I missed upon first glance. I hope you can find as much intrigue and beauty while viewing it as I have while creating it.

 Thank you for your interest.

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