Vasiliy Kandinsky 

The following information is taken from a variety web sources, which may or may not be reliable (Wikipedia).

He is credited with painting one of the first purely abstract works - I read as much from my art museum visits this past summer in Germany. What especially intrigued me about his works is their similarity to music, in my mind. And indeed, Kandinsky likened painting to the composition of Music, saying "Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul". His sensitivity to colour and delicate early portrayals of scenery in particular are what charms the observer.

Kandinsky was successful as an art theorist, and taught both art design and theory in Germany, later moving to France due to Nazi influence.

Several Circles

To be honest, it is very difficult to pick any particular painting out of the rich selection before me. But I suppose that when one says "Kandinsky", what comes to mind are the timeless floating circles of Several Circles, or the great, sprawling Composition pieces from his later work. I particularly like the geometric style of his works like Unbroken Line, but I have to say, something keeps drawing me back to the circles. This is rather troublesome for me, because the atmosphere and aura of Several Circles seems impossible to recreate for me. If I mess up, it'll simply look like a haphazard collection of digital tool applications that took no thought or effort. But I want to give it a shot, because the oil painting I did for my mother was already in the style of his geometric works, and I don't actually care much for his more chaotic works, or the representational ones closer towards his move into abstract expressionism.

From the Guggenheim page, this is what there was to read about Several Circles: The importance of circles in this painting prefigures the dominant role they would play in many subsequent works, culminating in his cosmic and harmonious image Several Circles. “The circle,” claimed Kandinsky, “is the synthesis of the greatest oppositions. It combines the concentric and the eccentric in a single form and in equilibrium. Of the three primary forms, it points most clearly to the fourth dimension.”

I can't say I really get what he's on about, but some of the words used there do call out to me. Words like "eccentric", "cosmic", and.. I keep wanting to use the word "timeless". In Several Circles, it seems as though the circles are moving - slowly oscillating, or sliding in and out of focus. This is the quality of the painting that would be the hardest to capture