act out the abstrACT
Batcules paints in a distinct abstract layered, textural technique and visual alphabet that pushes the creative driving force of colour.
Abstract painting expands beyond the traditional toolbox in an out-of-the-box process that reaches beyond the rules and perspective of 3D reality.
Shelley Batcules combines traditional, industrial and technological tools and mediums to stimulate inspiration and drive invention. Be conscious of the sub-conscious. Documenting the conscious “awake” and subconscious “dreaming” states of being is a process that opens the mind, spirit and soul to transcendent landscapes. This liberation from rules and constructed boundaries opens fresh ways of contemplating and notating in an expansive way that captures ideas taken from all disciplines and points of interest.
An open minded approach in terms of considering any and all tools from of the trades throughout history offers valuable opportunities to look at life in the full spectrum.
An example is to paint with a knife and fork, and put a power tool to work to spread the picture.
Abstraction provides a new view and process of multi-dimensional thinking that enables a skill set that expands to every field of study - one of the many reasons art is the root of smART, is so important.
The Colour of Human Emotions
Abstraction is about expansion and the ability to see the micro to the macro. Batcules is driven by colour and the goal to create an abstract layered textured technique that is a visual alphabet comprised of patterns of dots, pixels and/or lozenges of colour mixed using the scientific principles of colour theory with the intent to create tapestries of complex psychological colour relationships and vibrations. The patterns and colour relationships can be harmonic and/or disruptive depending on the colour formula and palette, the movement and vibration of the pattern and how the composition forms the subject matter.
The exploration of human emotions using the psychology of colour and the therapeutic effects of colour are other major interests for Batcules. During Batcules’ academic studies she had a keen interest in the painter Wassily Kandinsky and the German philosopher Goethe and their belief that colour had a strong impact on the human mood and emotion. A key goal is to provoke the spectator with a powerful visual sensory experience that will provoke an openminded approach to viewing new pictures and ideas which in turn promotes the power of new exploration, inspires discovery, and endorses people of all ages and from all places to embrace and appreciate new and unusual landscapes that have the potential to expand their horizons beyond that which is recognizable in the conscious concrete world only.
explore human emotions
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The oil painting Breathe measures 5'10" x 5'10." The creative process is an exploration of catharsis to form an abstract representation of the dream state combined with conscious experiences that serve as "wake-up calls." Dreams are a personal fascination I explore and visually translate to to understand spoken messages during sleep. I incorporate the messages from lucid dreams in concert of cascading colourful pixels. Breathe is an abstract landscape style composition that guides the spectator on life’s pathway, its stages and steps of growth which move toward the idea of stimulating the big universal questions and belief based considerations like where do we come from and where are we going, as an example the revelation of alpha and the omega.
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The content of Breathe in terms of its universality is reflected in classic selections from philosophers such as Plato and the Parable of the Cave notably “volte face” which serves as an appropriate metaphor for several of the expressions I attempt to express to the spectator:
The world of appearances is compared to a dark subterranean cave, the world of reality to the brilliant light outside; the unenlightened minds of ordinary people have their counterpart in the prisoners in the cave, deceived by the shadows of puppets, while the conversion of the philosopher is symbolized by the liberation of a prisoner who is compelled to make a volte face and emerge into the dazzling light; his social conscience, by his return to the cave (and his need of becoming accustomed again to its darkness, however awkwardly, to set others free.
BALL BUSTER
BALL BUSTER is a large scale oil and acrylic painting on canvas 48"X72.". The subject matter is a collision of abstract automatism and objective representation defining the moment when realities intersect, "an awakening" within or after a dream juxtaposed with the physical "visual capture", simply put - the collision point between subconscious dreaming into the impact of conscious physicality.
The "Socratic Shell Shock" as the sphere explodes, also signifying the shell encasing the soul, bursting outward to avert a controlled formatted world that neglects unknown dialogue and forms of expression. The space between the real world and the dream world, when worlds collide, the crashing momentum and lucid impact upon waking from a deep sleep, as though you are stone in a fast free fall toward the ground. This inspires the paradoxical metaphor of " the ground breaker" and the risks of breaking new ground - a sense that enlightenment expects the excavation of our personal ground where we are from and will one day return - in order to evolve.
Flickering zero gravity skies projectile the systemic sphere and heavy mass of societal pressure and population, an explosion into the weight of existence encased within flesh, the vulnerable role of being mortal in a material world, spiralling in the struggle to stop an inevitable impact on the flesh, as opposed to elevating the mind and spirit toward the eternal atmosphere.
The thick impasto texture extends the three dimensional sensibility and space while a full spectrum of scientifically mixed colour expands the limitless nature of the dreamscape and alternate realities which open opportunities toward the exploration of fluid peace.
OUTCAST'S MEDIAN
Mixed media on canvas, 55.5" X 79"
"Accepted Outcast's Median" is a complex abstract autobiography visually documenting being "the median" between the highway of hierarchical consumerist materialism and the dirt road of struggle and starvation. The road trip of an altruistic artist is to identify crossroads, create bridges, cross the lines of communication, pave resolution, erase "road rage", deconstruct monetary roadblocks, and increase the positive flow of traffic.
Abstract communication of this complex subject matter required developing a collaborative alphabet incorporating compositional proportions, colour theory, words and identifiable symbols in concert with associative mixed media elements strategically organized to define the physical and psychological aspects inherent in societal boundaries. Elements such as caution and electrical tape, green glitter paper, easter egg foil and paint tube casings have specific metaphors that "drive" the drama.
"THE MEDIAN" is an island, in the middle of the road, between the highway of hierarchical places, where consumerist materialism leads every level down the dirt road of struggle, starvation and survival of those fit enough to fight for freedom of expression."
SPINEHEAD
The painting “SPINEHEAD” is oil on canvas 48" X 60.” The subject matter represents both beginning and end, life and death. The canvas is split into a top and bottom composition by a distinct change in colour palette. From a psychological perspective the piece combines truth and fiction, conscious (what can be seen) and unconscious (what can’t be seen), what is above and what is below. The title “SPINEHEAD” and image is drawn from two sources with similar structural qualities: one real and the other fictional and theoretical. The first is a God’s eye (top down) perspective of a marginata cane plant. The second is a film figure known as the archetypal figure of the master or maker of the machine world matrix or system that faces “Neo” at the culmination of the third matrix film. A digital sketch was created as a reference to the larger oil painting with composed layers of images giving the opportunity for colour and composition experimentation prior to completing the final piece.
GRAVITY ON FIRE
GRAVITY ON FIRE is a mixed media abstract landscape painting on canvas 48" X 72." The subject and creative process is a psychological/therapeutic response to 911, an attempt to counter the heavy subject of human disaster with subtle abstract visual effects intended to inspire hope that strong souls survived this adversity. This metaphoric paradox considers how the act of the few, the magnitude of the consequences on the many, literally and physically created a mass psychological sense of a weightless loss of control. At the moment of impact flight turned to frenzy, many felt frozen in time, and time felt frozen as people stood at their televisions stunned in suspension, in zero gravity hopelessness, grasping for grounding to solidify some semblance of understanding how and why this could happen. Red, white and blue is the palette representative of the United States with the left side of the composition representing the fluttering flag floating in an atmosphere of zero gravity, while the central and right side of the canvas serves as a metaphor for the twin towers. Inlaid glitter serves to represent the fallen spirits whose light will shine on in the zero gravity of the next dimension.
PORTALS
The painting “Portals” is oil and acrylic on canvas, 49”X72,” representing an abstract portrait construction of the duality of reality in concert with fiction. As an architectural metaphor of beginning and end, a portal is a monumental gate or door or can represent the extremities or ends of a tunnel. The canvas divides the face in sections that form the “building of the mind.” In fiction, a portal is a magical or technological doorway connecting two locations, or from a quantum perspective connects points in time. The eyes look upward seeking knowledge and enlightenment while the radial formations radiate the sonic vibration of the soul and the sound waves of the inner voice that travels infinitely through space and time.
VERIGO
“VERIGO” is an abstract mixed media painting measuring 48 X 60 inches. The theme Veritas, Latin for truth, composed within the Constellation Virgo to capture the Fall of Icarus in a pool of oil, glued down by glitter.
The narrative is the fatal Fall of Icarus; the Icon that instilled an idea regarding the risks and stakes humans make to give themself merit, pushed by parents, pushing to the point that penetrates the limits, by attempting to achieve the impossible.
The idea of “being your own Man” machinates an intense introspective “(internal)” and “)external(“ pressure to invent innovation to announce an “Age” and aspire to ascend over Aeon’s, to accelerate past the finish line, and make way to eclipse and escape the mundane of the “everyday” example of life, that left UN-checked will unleash a label that leashes and lashes throughout life…Such an effort notes the need to check and balance narcissism, seen in the myth of Daedalus and Icarus, a story of how necessity facilitated the invention of something that was never meant for man and how it led to his downfall, showing us that the power of man has no limits, but also that we should be very careful how to use this power.
911: STIR THEN SHAKE
911 STIR THEN SHAKE is a mixed media painting, 30" X 60" using oil paint and glitter paper. This mixed media painting serves as a visual metaphor of being intoxicated by a materialist/consumer society values money and power over human lives.
A God’s eye perspective is used to form a vortex, downward thrust into a sparkling martini glass filled with a mountain of olives. Glittering pixels of paper symbolize ice cubes floating in a pool of illusion.
BLACK-EYED ME
"Black-Eyed Me" is a mixed media painting composed on board using acrylic and oil paint, black eyed peas, napkins, toilet paper, gift paper and coffee beans. “Black Eyed Me” is a radial crop composition with colour choices that signify “eyes wide open”, “waking up to smell the coffee” the retina with pinpointed vision built up with coffee beans to see the push / pull between external reality of the outside world and the reverse vortex thrust drawing inward to the unknown subconscious soul hidden within - “the window to the soul”.
Mixing food with thought stimulated Shelley to utilize everyday food staples and products as a mixed media tool of expression. The Black eyed pea stands for the heritage of struggle and survival. The history of the black-eyed pea in the civil war is an ideal metaphor for the struggles people face within the rat race developed by those seeking power and control over the many.
BLACK MATRIX
Black Matrix is a mixed media painting on canvas measuring 30”X40.” Often when Batcules paints abstract forms and landscapes she utilizes the title of the work as a take off point for the viewer to begin the journey of embracing ideas that are not visibly recognizable in the “real world.” In this case, the title “Black Matrix” explores the idea of the societal matrix. The primary black and white palette expresses the notion of what can be viewed as black and white while the mathematically proportioned grid composition opens the idea of looking at how the many parts make up the whole.
Each pod or section within the matrix is customized to express individual personalities living within the matrix community. Different techniques, materials and in some cases colour palettes are used within each square to create distinct emotional expressions and reactions.
Some squares have patterns of rotating brushstrokes surrounding openings reminiscent of black holes to create a vortex of feelings while others have toilet paper-mache landscapes giving a sense of a torn textured landscape and brightly coloured palette inserts taken from past work enliven the idea of the individual spark and spirit that can form in solitude.
Ultimately the idea is to suggest that each person is unique and individual – with an immortal soul - not just a cog in a wheel – otherwise known as the construct of society – or the “Matrix.”
We each have the ability within to find true freedom.o is compelled to make a volte face and emerge into the dazzling light; his social conscience, by his return to the cave (and his need of becoming accustomed again to its darkness, however awkwardly, to set others free.
WHITE MATRIX
White Matrix, 30”X40”, Mixed Media on canvas. Often when Batcules paints abstract forms and landscapes she utilizes the title of the work as a take off point for the viewer to begin the journey of embracing ideas that are not visibly recognizable in the “real world.”
In this case, the title “White Matrix” explores the idea of the societal matrix. Although the title focuses on white the multi-colour and tone palette expresses a range of feelings and events that may take place within a consistent mathematically proportioned grid composition suggesting how the many parts make up the whole. Each pod or section within the matrix is customized to express individual personalities living within the matrix community.
Different techniques, materials and in some cases colour palettes are used within each square to create distinct emotional expressions and reactions.
Some squares have patterns made up of toilet paper-mache landscapes giving a sense of a torn textured landscape and brightly coloured sections enliven the idea of the individual spark and spirit that can form in solitude.
Ultimately the idea is to suggest that each person is unique and individual – with an immortal soul - not just a cog in a wheel – otherwise known as the construct of society – or the “Matrix.” We each have the ability within to find true freedom.
SEE_SAW
"BLIND_LINE" is a distinct formal abstract technique developed by Shelley Batcules focused on a series or pattern of stripes, bands and lozenge shapes to create optical effects and illusions to give the spectator various experiences based on the composition of the "BLIND_LINE effect. Looking through the window, seeing through the slits and slices between the covering, serves as an additional layer of safety and privacy, a layer of opacity on top of a transparent glass house. When we look through window blinds, the eye adds up the object standing or floating behind it.
SEESAW is oil on canvas measuring 48” X 55.” The driving creative force behind See/Saw is the metaphor of past and present and the ups and downs of learning through experience. In this case Batcules uses her distinct abstract technique to create a layered, textural visual blind effect illusion comprised of linear bands of colour using the scientific principles of colour theory to create a push/pull, foreground/background effect with the intent to create a sense of looking through a window to another reality.
The centre band has a dark hole at the centre suggesting a black hole into the unknown and unseen creating a complex psychological relationship and vibration. The thick downward strokes of light that drag across the blinds creates a sense of sawing through the window blinds creating harmonic and/or disruptive relationships depending on the movement and vibration of the intersections and how they stimulate new sensation and subject matter.
Forest for the Trees
“Forest for the Trees” is oil and acrylic on canvas, measuring 24” X 36.” The painting is a layered abstract landscape which combines multiple perspectives of a “God’s eye perspective on a tree ring formation which radiates on top of a layer that incorporates a “blind” effect or the creation of a window blind technique which forms a layer between the tree rings and a complex background linear landscape implying a stand of trees intended to stimulate the viewer to question where is the forest and where is the tree in this layered experience.
The title incorporates the expression “Forest for the Trees” to further the idea which is used by someone who is too involved in the details of a problem to look at the situation as a whole. “You-can’t-see-the-forest-for-the-trees” means that we sometimes cannot see situations as they really are while we are in the midst of them. In short, we lose our perspective when we are too heavily invested in a particular situation, approach, organization, etc. Tree rings represent the tree and the rings themselves technically can be used to plot events from the past and with certain methods can predict what events could happen in the future.
LAND_LINES
Landlines is an oil and acrylic and mixed media painting on canvasmeasuring 36" X 36." Look at the lines across the land, define the territories, dig down to create the drainage, draw lines in the sand, then take a stick and spread out that line, like a broom taking the landscape back to the beginning.
Then, look up to the moon. See the lines in the light, that radiates toward the earth. Rays that represent silent communication... a conversation to contemplate where we can go, wake-up to where we once walked, and what we want to achieve...
SOULe path
SOuLE Path Waking the Soul to Walk the Path SOuLE Path: Waking the Soul to Walk Your Path explores the conscious (physical) and unconscious (spiritual) aspects of the human condition and existence. SOUL in spiritual terms is the invisible secret source of inspiration and instinct which guides the mind in gut instinct and decision making, while the SOLE of the shoe is viewed as a "real" functional object which protects the foot from the environment while walking the path of decisions.
Consider and contemplate the visible and invisible aspects of the words SOLE & SOUL. 1/ SOLE the visible human footprint notating a path or direction. 2/ SOUL the invisible human psyche, origin of spirituality, source of inspiration and instinct, and centre of transcendence.
TIME_SLICE
Time_slice is a mixed media on canvas incorporating wax, stain glass, fish hooks and fishline.
BLUE FLAME
Oil on canvas, 18” X 48”
Colour tells us about the temperature of a candle flame.
Blue flame is an abstract painting created through an intuitive experience of sparking the combustion of the mind to see the hottest flare of the soul and feel the heat of the divine brilliantly blue flame of eternity. A high-oxygen fire burns blue. So candle flames are blue at the bottom because that's where they take up fresh air.
A blue flame indicates complete combustion and is actually the hottest part of the candle flame at 1670 degrees F (1400 C.) That is where the flame has the most oxygen and you are getting complete combustion. The reddish part is the coolest part, about 1070 F (800C). Copper produces a blue flame.
The inner core of the candle flame is light blue, with a temperature of around 1800 K (1500 °C).
The hottest fires are from oxyacetylene torches (about 3000 degrees Centigrade) that combine oxygen and gas to create pinpoint blue flames.
Azula's fire was made blue to denote both her mastery in both fire-bending and lightning-creation. Azula's fire burns hotter than most due to her lightning-mastery, but will turn orange as it cools. Second in raw power only to the Fire Lord Ozai, she was a force to be reckoned with.
DEADWOOD
oil on canvas
NOUN: wood dead on the tree, useless personnel or material, solid timbers built in at the extreme bow and stern of a ship when too narrow to permit framing, bowling pins that have been knocked down but remain on the alley
Deadwood received its name by early settlers after the dead trees found in its gulch. The settlement began in the 1870's after the discovery of gold in 1874. What started as a tiny gold camp quickly grew into a town that attracted outlaws, gamblers, businessmen, miners, gunslingers, madams and working girls.
Forest fires clear away deadwood to promote new growth; decisive defeat in war creates space for societal transformations.
