Tom Philips' Humament!!! =]

On page 200 of Tom Phillips’ A Humument, Phillips portrays his feelings through his artwork and rich detail in color, shades, and texts. even the most unique occurrence can be shadowed by other perceptions around similar to it. Phillips uses streaks of bold dots, colors and contrasts dark and light imagery which shows the different perceptions of reality within the human mind. The light imagery is where everything seems holy and beautiful with the opera lady singing and her hand reaching out to the sky, where as the dark imagery seems mysterious and cloudy with a shadow of a person in the background. To start, the texts are defined with bold black borders as well as the painting itself. The painting cuts such as a puzzle with missing pieces and there is especially the biggest cut in the middle of the painting where it also resembles the biggest font of text which is a name, “Irma”, which I believe to be the woman who is singing in the opera and reaching her hand out. The text boxes itself are also in the shape of puzzle pieces connecting to each other to make one full sentence. Phillips does this to express a feeling of being incomplete and wanting more such as the hand reaching out or the puzzle pieces being separated rather than being together. “In the street studying sound”, represents the noises around the world or from both the light and dark imagery and how its loud everywhere. “The opera”, is the noises from the light imagery, the beautiful sound from the opera with its soothing music from the lady. “..had yet no heavy salmon-coloured tone;”, represents how the dark imagery is clashing with the light imagery making everything sound the same and the beautiful sound from the opera lady isn’t getting through due to the noises around the whole world and how the dark imagery balances with the light imagery. The text explains how the world is balanced with good and evil no matter how beautiful the good is or how ugly the evil is.Phillips uses many distinct colors to resemble the good and evil. For the dark imagery he uses olive green, a very disgusting evil type of green such as the swamp. Then he gradually shades it in to turn from olive green to complete blackness. In addition, he makes the shadow of a character all sketchy as if it were fading to portray how sneaky it is and hard to find. The dark imagery blends in with the light imagery in the middle where from the dark colors comes light colors. The light imagery has yellow which is the one of the brightest color of them all along with light blue and a tint of orange. The opera lady’s hand which is reaching to the sky has the orange tint around it as if I were a glow along with the light blue lining which goes around her whole arm and then around her body. The dots around the whole background make the drawing seem blurry and makes everything seems as if its fading away, almost like the image is being created by the vibrations from the sound. Then there is the buildings at the bottom of the picture which represents the street that Phillips was talking about, or the world. It is a shadow showing how with both the good and evil side combine everything is blank due to everything evening up. A positive one and a negative one added together is zero, just like good and evil.The texts and colors together form the message that Philips is trying to express. His abstract meaning of good and evil is represented so well with his indirect meanings through the opera lady‘s beautiful singing to the darkness of shadows and mystery, perhaps the protagonist, could also be used to describe simple objects to create a beautiful piece of art. People find happiness from hearing the voice of opera and go to the opera to be soothed and feel peace and serenity. The shadows from the outside is scary and make you wonder what is going wrong or make you stress about everything around you. The night and its mysteries and darkness makes you almost incapable to perceive what is going on around you. On the other hand, with the light and daytime, you are able to comprehend everything around you and with the sun helps sooth you with heat and happiness. In conclusion, Phillips uses his great art expressions and abstract meaning to portray his message. He uses great blends of colors, imagery of light and darkness, rich detail on objects such as the shadow, opera lady, and buildings, and great fading effect with the way he does his painting with dots. Phillip’s emotions and message is perfectly portrayed through his art.