Naomie Kremer: Paint Moves
At first, the abstract painting dominating the museum wall appears as fixed as dry ink on paper.
Then the paint moves. Brush strokes shimmer like wind chimes, and the whole painting trembles as if it’s experiencing an earthquake. After every stroke in the painting collapses in a heap and disappears, the painting reassembles itself, stroke by stroke, in an animated sequence.
You’ve just watched Naomie Kremer’s digital deconstruction - and reconstruction - of her oil painting “Rudimentary Pixillation,” part of the University of California Berkeley Art Museum’s permanent collection.
The animated painting, called “Rudimentary Moves,” is underscored by music and sound effects and runs nearly four minutes in a continuous loop.
Kremer, known internationally for sensuously rich paintings full of colliding colors and stunning detail, is pioneering a dialogue between handmade art and digitally-created art. Her digital tools: a Power Mac G5, Adobe Photoshop and Motion 2.
Arts Alive
Preparing for a show of her work at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art — “Keeping Time: Naomie Kremer Works 1992-2004” — Kremer says she first decided to digitally animate one of her paintings because she wanted to “re-enter the paintings and play with them in another way.
“When I work on a painting, I’m really in it,” Kremer explains. “Once I’ve finished it, it’s like a door closes. You re-enter the painting by looking at it, but you can’t physically do anything more with it.
Paint is incredibly tangible and there are many things it can do, but there are many things it can’t do. I’m interested in what digital media can do within its own possibilities. I’ve never wanted to try to do a painting on the computer, but I had ideas that could not be expressed in paint.”
Abstract Narrative
How does she execute those ideas? Beginning with a digital image of the original painting, Kremer uses Photoshop’s lasso tool to isolate individual brush strokes and put them into separate layers. By the time she’s done, Kremer has created more than 1,000 layers of digital color and brushstroke shapes. Under her direction, her assistant, Ryan Hayford, animates these using Motion on the Power Mac G5.
“I’m interested in what digital media can do within its own possibilities. I’ve never wanted to try to do a painting on the computer, but I had ideas that could not be expressed in paint.”
“The painting is completely abstract,” Kremer emphasizes, “but, once I started picking out the pieces and looking at them, I found I could put them together in such a way that they suggested people. So I decided to make these digital characters interact and mime a sort of narrative which isn’t abstract anymore.”
Possibilities in Process
Kremer created the 1,000-plus layers because, she says, “I wanted to create a level of activity like when you’re out on the street and everything is moving slightly, whether or not you’re focusing on it. The trees are shaking in the breeze, light shimmers on leaves, people are walking by and it’s all happening simultaneously.”
She also wanted to use the animation process to call attention to the intuitive nature of abstract art. “The way I make decisions is very spontaneous and somewhat arbitrary,” she says. “A piece of paint can sit on the upper right corner of the painting, or it can just as well move down to the lower left corner. I wanted to show the process of entertaining these possibilities.”
