Seran Dipity, a New? Art Form
Seran wrap and water based paints are commonly used to create textured surfaces. The process is the following: 1. Wet a piece of watercolor paper well. 2. Splatter or paint one to three colors, preferably complementary colors on the paper, wet into wet. 3. Press Seran Wrap to the surface and massage the surface until the Seran Wrap clings to the surface. 4. Allow to dry. 5. Remove the Seran Wrap. The resulting paper contains a beautiful array of blended colors with sharp white and dark lines making essentially a pseudo random pattern, which can be used in many ways to the final art work. Google “Seran wrap painting” to see live demonstrations.
Inspired by a discussion with Pauline Abbott and our friend Sister Treasa Ridge, who was using the process in color therapy, I recognized a new art form that we named “Seran-dipity”, based on combining serendipity and creativity with the Seran wrap texturing process. The resulting art form enables one, first hand, to experience how serendipity, imagination, and psychology can produce beautiful images and new information from what otherwise appears to be random lines. Every individual will see a different image and get a different experience,depending on personality and recent experience brought to the process.
In most conventional art, the artist views a scene or muse and transfers his/her interpretation of it onto a blank canvas. In Seran-dipity the artist first creates a pseudo random pattern on a canvas, views the pattern, and calls upon his/her mind, imagination, and experience to create an image inspired and directed by the pattern. The image is thus created entirely in the artist’s mind, and extracted by placing the right hues and values into the pattern, thus transforming the imagined image to canvas. Different artists will “see” different images in the pattern, depending upon personality, expectations, and psychology. I usually see many images and go through multiple phases and some degree of agony and delight in choosing one, knowing that the unchosen ones will be destroyed in the process. I find the process both relaxing and rewarding and the end result often inspiring.
Perhaps, like Al Gore, I wasn’t the first to “invent” Seran-dipity or even to give it a name. (Before the internet became a widely available resource, Al Gore described and heavily promoted it as “the information superhighway”). My thought is that giving it a descriptive name and promotion may better avail it as an art form that can benefit, entertain, and teach many creative individuals, at all levels, to “see” , develop, and explore their own imgination.
The pictures below show one example of the process and final product of the art form. The first picture shows a canvas prepared using the common Seran wrap texturing method, here with mauve and yellow paints. Having previously been painting angels, made it natural that the first image I would see in the pattern was that of an angel (actually two angels). In the finished piece, the angel on the left launches a cherub.
The Canvas preparation-What can you see in the canvas?
“Seeing” and choosing images to extract and then extracting them. The angel on the left launches the cherub to the right.
Examples of finished Seran dipity
Mystical Mountain Waterfall
Cerulean Angel
A Prepared Canvas Ready for “Seeing”, Choosing and Extracting
Can you see candidate images to extract? Feel free to rotate the canvas. I am in a struggle to choose between at least three amazing images.