Week 3 was a bit more interesting in terms of physical studio work and technique learning than the previous two weeks. The readings from Painting Today, Landscape and Life and Death, were both insightful, although I felt that the landscape chapter had more impact on my work in the moment. I’ve never enjoyed painting landscapes, but being able to look into the history, origin, and why others are drawn to them helped me view them as something more than a pretty picture. On Color, by Amy Sillman was expressive and stimulated a keener interest in where and why we have the pigments we do,  and Thierry De Duve’s reading offered a perspective on painting and its “thingness” that I haven’t come close to envisioning on my own.

Duve’s podcast  on Immanuel Kant was perhaps my favorite content of this week for two reasons. Firstly, I am not familiar with Immanuel Kant, and Duve’s introduction and interpretation of his work helped me grasp the density without too much of a struggle. Secondly, once processing Duve’s interpretation, I was shown an entirely new definition of beauty that I’ve been thinking about with everything I see.

In this week, we covered the basics of direct painting, form, value, and perspective. Personally, I find direct painting and perspective a weakness of mine, so it was a pleasant surprise to find these paintings a bit less challenging than in previous situations. The hardest part of these paintings was the application of white in the formal copy, which has helped me learn that white will almost never be “fully white” in an oil painting.

5 Skills:

Direct Painting

Close listening of a podcast

How to cut wood with a jack saw

Creating stretcher bars from scratch

Oil mixing and paint application

5 Terms:

Ala Prima: Painting all at once/direct painting/thick

Orthogonals: Imaginary “searching” lines in a perspective drawing

Pharmakon:  A Greek word meaning color, drug, poison, or intoxicant

Ekphrasis: An essay that analyzes a painting or image

Formal analysis v. content v. interpretation: Formal analysis is the basic characteristics of what you see like line, color, or form. Content is what the painting is showing, like specific objects, fruit, house, table, etc.. Interpretation is what you think the artist is trying to say, and is something to be aware of while writing and analyzing paintings or text. (I feel I’ve been having some trouble differentiating these three when critiquing, and hope that the more I remind myself of their differences, the less blurry the lines between them will be.

The woodshop workshop was especially new and exciting for me, and creating my own canvas is an insanely interesting resource to be offered for this program. I do wish I had a bit more time and instruction during the process, due to the fact that the machines and material can be a bit intimidating. Although, I felt very accomplished after finishing it with the help of my studio mates later on.