Leapfrog

 

Leapfrog by Geoff Lewis  oil on board 18x16

The painting above has long been one of my favorites, done by a friend of mine in Ashland, Oregon, Geoff Lewis.  Geoff began his career as a commercial artist and then transitioned into fine art, establishing a reputation for himself in the Bay Area before eventually moving north to little Ashland in the mid-seventies.  I met him in the coffee shop run by a mutual friend, where Geoff would hang out looking for someone with whom to play backgammon.  We spent quite a bit of time together from the late 70's to the early 80's, drinking and smoking and chatting.  Geoff told me a great deal about his artistic past, but when I knew him, he seemed to have lost his passion for creating new work, and would only paint when he had a show to put on.  He would then stage a number (at least five or six) of canvases in a semi-circle and go from one to the next, quickly building them up together.  But for the most part, he preferred hanging out, drinking and dancing, and acting in community theater.  

His style was in a tradtional, subdued manner and I remember him showing me a classic compositional structure he sometimes used when beginning a painting.  It involved drawing lines from each corner to the midpoint on the opposite side and then subdividing the space even further with more and more lines.  It seemed endlessly complicated and I wondered about the value of it back then.  His point was that if you put elements of the painting along those lines or at intersections, it would infuse the piece with a natural power.  (He was also into reading auras and invisible energy in people.)

I bought this piece from Geoff during one of his down periods, when he was selling off things in his home in order to make rent.  I also bought from him an original manuscript page from William Wordsworth, for $100.  I didn't have much money back then, either, but I often had enough to help out friends.  But I felt so wrong about taking such a precious artifact from him that I sold it back to him when he got back on his feet.  Unfortunately, he later sold it to someone else when he needed money again.

At any rate, I've long wondered about how he structured this painting above, since it seems to have some undefinable something that draws one to it.  So yesterday I made a quick sketch of it on a recycled board in order to investigate the layout, and the result is this:

I was stunned to discover how closely he held to the simple linear framework.  The two girls are fitted neatly into the diamond shape created by the four main compositional lines.  I'm not certain of the basis of the other two important lines, but the one following the leg and back of the girl in red seems to go from points 2/3 of the way along each edge from the upper left corner.  And the final line, indicated in his painting by the change in value in the background, intersects the knee, the hands and the foot, providing another feeling of unity and connection to the whole.