What a term this has been. I feel as if the exercises we did this term shifted everyone’s process and turned us into real painters.
Firstly we drew for about three days.Painting flowers is similar to doing portrait work.Each flower has its different energy and form and they are excellent for good observation exercises, getting gesture, proportion and relation of points right so it actually looks like an iris etc
Fresco brush exercise
There was a very liberating effect of painting with “fresco brushes” (brushes taped onto bamboo poles!)
The lack of control meant some marvellous mark making and interesting paint. We got away from the “willed” image and into what real painting is all about.
This was also compounded by the collaborative aspect of this exercise when we all moved around the room working on each painting in turns.This stopped all that anxiety of messing it all up and made us reckless and brave.
Painting is all about the balance between this intuitive, spontaneous, gestural approach and a disciplined practice of making good choices!!!(no pressure then!)
But also because of the lack of control ones expectations have to take a back seat.We learned how to let the materials contribute to the making of the painting and to “watch” what happened rather than driving the image
And it is in this hiatus between intent(the vague idea you have of how a painting will go) and the resolution(how it ACTUALLY turns out) that ART happens.
I guess its a little like the comment that John Lennon made about Life being what happens when you are planning something else…
Also the fact that we put out big pots of paint to work with meant that we were sloshing it onto the canvas.
and this is a GOOD THING
Now this is not to say that we all turned into abstract expressionists overnight…because thats not what happened.
Life happens fast, art happens slow.
What did happen in the subsequent works we did , each person’s process was shifted a little.
They made edgier marks with the brush
they shifted the leaves around to better suit the composition.
they made Gordon Harris very happy because they used much more paint.
I guess you could say that everyone loosened up and enjoyed the process…they TRUSTED their process more.
This was a really lovely thing to experience as a teacher…people started to have real fun
We spent several hours lighting the flowers and taking some excellent reference photos to work from.
and then we got to work
Dianne Kendall
Judy Gillet
Cynthia Mitchell
Pamela Bell
Annette Pearton
Maggie Lindner
Wendy Selkirk
Angela Hutton
All up it was a great term.
Next year we will carry on the Fresco brush excercise in painting some landscapes.
Take a leaf out of Toss Woollastons book
Happy Christmas to you all and I look forward to seeing you in the new year