Lisa Call

Contemporary Textile Artist

Looking Back at Telephone Game: Revisiting the Roots of Geometry of Distraction

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by

Lisa Call
in

Telephone Game Paintings

I’m in the planning stage for new larger pieces in the Geometry of Distraction series. So it seemed like a good moment to go back to the beginning – to look at where the series started.

Two years ago I completed 100 small paintings during a concentrated working trip to an isolated wool shed in Te Tara-o-te-Ika-a-Māui (the Coromandel Peninsula in New Zealand).

These small paintings, Telephone Game, were the proof of concept for what became the Geometry of Distraction series.

Telephone Game - a grid of 100 small abstract watercolour paintings exploring geometric composition with circles, squares, and rectangles in warm primary and secondary colours. Each painting 5 × 5 in (12.7 × 12.7 cm). Proof of concept for the Geometry of Distraction series. Lisa Call.
Telephone Game, each painting 5 x 5 in (12.7 x 12.7 cm), watercolour on paper

The Initial Idea

Before I even had an idea for the series, I was playing around with value, light and dark, in my sketchbook. I had no particular idea in mind.

I kept drawing the same simple composition over and over again in a variety of ways. For weeks on end I found myself returning to this simple composition and then adding variations. Something about these shapes was clearly resonating with me.

And then one day I sketched the back of my iphone on the same page as one of these simple compositions and the light went on! Aha! We see those shapes ALL the time as we carry that darn phone with us everywhere we go.

From here the series was born thanks to the magic of sketchbooks.

In that moment of recognition I had the conceptual anchor for the work: distraction, attention, and the persistent interruption from devices.

Looking Back to Move Forward

Looking back at these 100 small paintings now, I’m interested in what I was doing that I haven’t necessarily carried forward.

One of the first things I noticed was that by the end of the 100 paintings the structure of the composition had drastically changed even though the basic elements – three circles and a square have been held (mostly) constant.

It works when there are 100 paintings to tell the story. So as I get larger, I want to see where I can push the composition, while also keeping in mind those three circles and the square were what I first fell in love with.

I’m excited to see what I can do with a larger canvas.

I’m also considering making another 100 paintings now to see what emerges now that the series has progressed.