Student Work

Collaborative study from Bonnard... better images soon!

riffs and appropriations

Titian, Venus

Manet, Olympia

Kehinde Wiley (L) and J.L. David (R)

Frida Kahlo

Yasumasa Morimura

Jan Van Eyck

I need to look up who did this photo! Will update with credit asap.

Caravaggio

Cindy Sherman (she takes photos of herself in various guises, personas, etc.)

Interior/Exterior, Warm and Cool

Vuillard

Matisse

Matisse

Fairfield Porter

Fairfield Porter

Bonnard

Dufy

"Exciting Color World"*

* title of a painting by yours truly, age 3

Georgia O'Keeffe

Mark Rothko

Jules Olitski

Jules Olitski

Helen Frankenthaler

Harry Callahan

I really recommend the Harry Callahan exhibit at the National Gallery of Art. Looking at his work, I see a guy always attuned to the visual world, to whatever moments and phenomena and bits ands bobs that he might encounter. And also always willing to perform all sorts of experiments with his photography -- collaging, double-exposing, etc (see the photo above that is of a stationary flashlight in a dark room, with Callahan moving the camera).

A faith in intuition and experiment, and in always LOOKING. I have been painting a lot from imagination and photos lately, but I need to go back to painting from life, experiencing that intense kind of seeing that lets you observe the marvelous in the ordinary. Seeing Callahan's work made me think about this, and the Ralph Waldo Emerson quote about being "uplifted into infinite spaces, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all."

I'd like to know more about Callahan's life and his art-making and art-teaching. The exhibition text described him as a quiet, modest, doubt-full sort of teacher. He took so many shots but selected a very few for finished works.

Here are some quotes:

I think nearly every artist continually wants to reach the edge of nothingness - the point where you can't go any further.

The photographs that excite me are photographs that say something in a new manner; not for the sake of being different, but ones that are different because the individual is different and the individual expresses himself.

I photograph continuously, often without a good idea or strong feelings. During this time the photos are nearly all poor but I believe they develop my seeing and help later on in other photos. I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people.

Quote

"With my students, I don’t even talk about abstraction and representation, because I think we’re beyond that. I think we’re at a time where everything is abstract and everything is representational. It’s more about how you find your own language with paint. It’s really just your body and its relationship to the world. Using the senses is not anti-intellectual."
Painter Josephine Halvorson in The Brooklyn Rail

Peto

John Frederick Peto

student work

Not too long ago, I taught a high school oil painting workshop -- students made their own bulletin board displays and painted 'em, inspired by John F. Peto. Glad I provided a lot of ribbon, string, and neon masking tape. We got even more into making the still life set ups than painting them.

classes

collab student drawing at Arlington Arts Center, after Copley

Hi friends! Wishing you a happy holiday season and best wishes for the new year. Starting late January, I'm teaching several evening classes in Arlington, VA. Here are the details:

At the Arlington Arts Center

Tuesdays, 6:30- 9:00 (1/24-3/13) : Drawing with Color

Thursdays, 7– 9:30 (1/26-3/22): Drawing: Focus on Portraiture

for more info or to register, visit: https://www.arlingtonartscenter.org/education (info available on January 3rd)

At Fairlington Community Center:

Mondays, beginning Jan. 23, 7-9pm: Art of Sketching

This class teaches beginning students the art of sketching and how to capture the essence of something quickly and simply on paper.Great class for beginners learning how to draw and for advanced students looking to quicken their drawing skills. Students learn how to seeproportion, movement, form and expression of what they are observing and then capture that quickly on paper. Learn various sketching techniques while using basic drawing as graphite sticks, conte crayon, pens and charcoal. No prior drawing experiencenecessary.

for more info or to register, visit: http://www.arlingtonva.us/Departments/ParksRecreation/ParksRecreationMain.aspx

Kimberly Trowbridge: Teaching Painting

I'm a fan of Kimberly Trowbridge's work, and I really like Ms. Trowbridge's page of student work and information on her methods of teaching painting. She writes:

In teaching painting, I aim to teach a mode of thinking and seeing rather than a stylistic approach. My hope is that students can apply this critical thinking to any number of personal and expressive forms throughout their development. No matter the specific subject matter addressed in my courses, my primary focus remains consistent: Color and Space. I teach the direct painting method from observation as the means for engaging with a formal visual vocabulary...

I am part of a lineage of painters that descends from Charles Hawthorne, including Edwin Dickinson, Lennart Anderson, and Tim Kennedy. As part of this lineage, I believe in the rigorous translation of the observed world and the power of “spots” of true color to express the essence and integrity of a given space or form. At the very heart of learning how to paint is the ability to see color relationships and to mix equivalent responses on the palette. I stress the importance of palette organization as a tool for organizing one’s thoughts. Each color decision is based on the three relative questions that are fundamental to my teaching: What value is it? What temperature is it? How intense is it?

portrait class

by Barbara Sause

Please check out some of the beautiful work by students in the portrait I/II class I taught at Anne Arundel Community College this past semester.

in living color

Wolfgang Laib

Laura Kinneberg's CMYK Day Project

from an Italian art magazine, not sure what this is

Reading about color theory -- Itten, Albers, Munsell -- mainly just looking at cool stuff like the above. And color field folks - Rothko, Hoffman, Frankenthaler, Hans Hoffman; also Gee's Bend and Paul Klee.

Art Lessons

Corot, Artist's Studio, Young Woman with a Mandolin

Some good quotes, taken from Robert Hale's Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters:

"I work on all parts of my painting at the same time, improving it...until I find that the effect is complete." --Corot

"A mirror is a good judge for you to have. It is marvelous how every weakness in a painting is so clearly revealed in a mirror." --Alberti

"A painter who has no doubts about his own ability will attain very little. When his work exceeds his judgement, the artist learns nothing. But when his judgement is superior to his work, he will never cease to improve, unless his love of money interferes with his progress." --Leonardo

kid art

This summer I am working at an art camp for elementary-age kids. They say funny things:

Camper 1: "Ooh, lets go to the modern art wing [of the National Gallery]"
Camper 2: "Uh, oh, watch out -- "modern" means "naked"."

At a cheesy performance about recycled music instruments:
Cheesy performer: "See, here's a drum made of a box, and a guitar made out of rubber bands! You can make instruments from just about anything, whateverr the f--, uh, heck you want!"
Camper: "Was that man about to say a bad word?"
Counselor: "Yes, that is why the counselors were all laughing so much."
Camper: "I was laughing too, because I know that word. My mom says it in the car all the time. She honks so she thinks I can't hear it, but I can."

Camper: "There is a lot of nakedism in art."

They also make pretty cool art. We did a pointilism landscape painting project using tempera paints and q-tips. Before they got to work, we brainstormed the things you can find in the landscape, and we talked about creating a sense of depth using scale and overlap. I did a demonstration about how objects seem smaller from far away, basically by doing this. We also talked about light and shadow, and I encouraged them to be imaginative in their use of color.

order and chaos

I was helping a high school ceamics teacher tame some of the entropy raging in the school ceramics studio. While we did some basic organizing, the next task was to have the students really do the bulk of the clean-up themselves: cleaning tools, sorting glazes, and so forth. The teacher and I talked about how investing art students in every step of the process -- from preparing the clay to clean-up, say, or from stretching canvas to brush clean -up to frame-making-- helps students to uild an "identity as an artist." Learning all of these skills is empowering in general, and helps one go from "art student" to artist.

Anway, amidst the studio mess, I got thinking about the dualities of order and chaos. A colleague of mine at GW is having his painting students address these thematic concerns in their end-of-semester painting projects. So many possibilities...what a good springboard. Beautiful chaos? Destructive chaos? Order as tranquil or sterile? Abstraction? Representaion? As a teacher it is hard to strike just the right balance in setting assignment parameters: the assignment must be open enough to permit wide-ranging investigations of genuine interest to the students, but specific enought to impose useful, practical limitations.

In any case, if I ever riff on this assignment idea, I am thinking I would want to show artwork by, among others, Julie Mehretu, Mia Feuer, and Jessica Braiterman (above), as well as old-school vanitas paintings.

Thunder Lizards

Eureka! I have found my calling(s)! There is the (s) because my vocation is four-fold:

1.artist
2.interior decorator
3.teacher
4.museum diorama maker

If someone wants me to decorate their living room with a dinosaur tableau, then that would just be ideal. This week I went to the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum end enjoyed the various dioramas, such as one in which a T-Rex goes in for the kill. Here's a detail (sans T-Rex):

Speaking of ferocious animals, I was substitute teaching for a second grade class this week. Because I was teaching in Spanish, I realized that I have better Spanish vocabulary when it comes to paleontology than when it comes to reprimanding children.

We read a short nonfiction piece about dinosaurios. Then I had each student draw a specific type of dinosaur, dino-appropriate foliage, or the like. We put it all together as a glorious hallway poster:

you can tell that I made the volcano (I did go to art school... I mean, look at that fantastic lava flow)

Art Pages from The Guardian

Howard Hodgkin's studio

Artist Studios -- A peek into artists' workspaces

Guide to Drawing -- Interviews and vids on drawing with William Kentridge, Shahzia Sikander, and many more.

Que es mi barco mi tesoro

a gift from a student, awww. it really did rain like that this weekend, too.

Do a picture, then destroy it

Lucian Freud by Frank Auerbach

Chuck Close by Jim Dine

“The more courageous that I am in destroying partial success, the more likely it is that I will get something alive and true.”

Frank Auerbach

"I do a picture-then I destroy it. In the end, though, nothing is lost: the red I took from one place turns up somewhere else."

"A picture is not thought out and settled beforehand. While it is being done it changes as one's thoughts change. And when it is finished, it still goes on changing, according to the state of mind of whoever is looking at it. A picture lives a life like a living creature, undergoing changes imposed on us by our life from day to day. This is natural enough, as the picture lives only through the man who is looking at it..."

"When you begin a picture, you often make some marvelous incidental effects. You must be on your guard against these. Destroy them, and do the passage over several times. Each time he destroys an incidental effect, the artist does not really suppress it, but rather transforms it, condenses it, and makes it more substantial.”

Pablo Picasso

“I find that often students who struggle with an assignment are inclined to abandon the struggle and begin again. This practice unnerves me…Important learning occurs when a struggle is examined and analyzed, diagnosed, and a prescription offered. Make it work.”

Tim Gunn