HOW CAN VISUAL ARTS COMMUNICATE AS A LANGUAGE?
In my first short essay, I mentioned that for me, visual art is a form of language. How can visual art communicates as a language to the viewers? In general, language is a form of written texts such as alphabets or specific symbols and sound to communicate to people. An example of alphabets is English alphabets that comprise of 5 vowels and 21 letters of consonants. These are building blocks for us to write sentences that communicate our thoughts and ideas for us to read and understand. In a similar fashion, visual art’s building block consists of colour, form, line, texture, space, shape and value. These are classified as elements of art. The elements of art enable artists to create images or form to communicate their thoughts and ideas. To further elaborate visual art’s building blocks, let’s take a look at the painting below:
The artwork is broken down into 2 oblong shapes, which are divided by a middle vertical line. In both shapes, there are thick or thin lines. These lines are in different types of colours. These colours come in different value in term of darker colours such as dark green to connote darker tone or light pink to represent lighter tone. The lines are to give a smooth and consistent texture. The light and dark tone of the lines are to give a space as in light tone represents negative space and darker tone refers to positive space. The lines and colours are to offer a visual form for viewers to feel the visual impact of the painting.
Title: Intensity
Size: 48 X 36 inch
Medium: Acrylic
Year: 2023
In view of the above, the elements of art is a form of “creative alphabets” and building blocks for us to create an artwork.
Name: Kay Kok Chung Oi, Ed.D
Visual artist, art educator and researcher
Email: cokuan@googlemail.com