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Mirina
Garoufalidis
Random Squares
This painting is from the period of time where I was interested in creating high-contrast black and white pieces that struck a balance between perfection/imperfection or control/lack of control. These themes were very personal to me, and I chose to explore them through my art.
In this piece, I was inspired by artists like Pierette Bloch and John Cage who created beautiful works with simple mark making.
Process
"Untitled", 1972, Pierrette Bloch.
Along the theme of control and letting it go, I chose to strike that balance while letting a random number generator chose my placing of my marks, while controlling their placement by aligning them to a grid.
Method
To select random squares, I calculated the number of total squares where the 1st square was in the upper left hand corner and the last square was in the bottom left corner. Thus, I could select any random number within those bounds to place a mark randomly. I drew the grid on a transparent sheet, marked and x in each grid mark selected by the random number generator, and projected this grid onto a sheet of paper to paint over.
Test
Process
Result
Reflection
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