“Alien Gate”
Watercolor crayon on paper
9″ x 12″
© 2009 Marilyn Fenn

Treasure Chest

Today I’m participating in a collaborative online project with other art bloggers.  We are re-posting one of our favorite posts from our blogs.  I chose to re-post some notes from art school from way back when, because I find these tips personally useful to review every so often, especially this year when I am exploring various other avenues in my creative process.  Perhaps other artists will find some of these tips helpful, too.

I also recommend that you view the post from the organizer of this project, Seth Apter, on his blog The Altered Page.  It’s a gorgeous, compelling and inspiring piece.

You can link to all participating artists from the Treasure Chest post on Seth’s blog.

Finally, the piece above is a brand new work from my new series, Paintings from the Hot, Hot Summer of 2009.  So here’s my Buried Treasure:

Class notes from art camp classes with George Liebert and Dan Gustin, Oxbow, MI, summer 1991.

Make a list of verbs and adjectives about your own work.

When struggling with a work, isolate parts of it and do lots of sketches to come up with a better composition.

What are your personal, specific goals?

Colors: similar vs. somber vs. stronger.

Realism vs. abstraction – both successful, maybe in combination.

Consider excitement of surfaces vs. complex images. Patterns on blanket, individual parts developed, keep to whole color – add pink, red, clear blue, zingier color.

Keep exciting in earlier stages.

Develop through series of big changes to work out issues.

Series of patterns; sincerity, passion.

Beware of making shadows that are a hole to hell (i.e., too dark) – gap in thinking color rather than value.

Take inventory – look at beautiful drawings in museum.

Strange mix of sacred and profane.

Baroque art: look at Poussin, Rubens’ sketches, Rembrandt, make drawings about what interests you — movement, etc.

Overlap some things.

Check a variety of approaches; work on sense of design.

Look at Eric Fischl – palette in realistic landscape.

Painting by Matthew Ritchie
“The Living Will”
2004
Oil and marker on canvas
88 x 99 inches

An idea that bears repeating – aim for a compelling, unorthodox originality…

Class notes from Reinventing Your Creative Process with Andrew Long, Fall 2007

I am so going to miss these classes with Andrew Long.  He said this would be a life-altering experience, and as grand a claim as that may sound, he wasn’t kidding.

My work changed fairly dramatically after taking the first version of this class with him last spring.  I started aiming again for complete abstraction (often my first love when viewing art) — just playing in the studio, and following the brush where it led.  I was experiencing a real joy in painting – not that I haven’t usually over the past decade or more, but now I was giving myself permission to explore with a new kind of freedom.  Some of the paintings I did in the past 6 months or so have been more successful than others, and I do really love them.

But when presented with questions like, “why are you painting what you’re painting?”  “Are you saying something?”  “What’s the difference between this painting and wallpaper or a tablecloth or whatever?” — I had to take a step back, take a good hard look, try to evaluate my own work without that proud attachment of “I did this” achievement. It’s been a very painful week of soul-searching.

I have no idea if I’m ever going to be a painter who does more than pretty paintings to decorate your living room walls with.  But, my concerns are deeper than that, my interests are broad and varied — I hope I can finally find a way to incorporate all my visual interests with the less visual topics that fascinate me into a cohesive body of work — my own world of interests, coming together in a beautiful visual language or world of my own.  Why not mix abstraction, representation, diagramming, mapping, and all visual forms of communication on the same canvas?

Give me 6 months, a year, maybe two — or perhaps more — and let’s see if I can really re-invent myself this time into a painter that bears paying attention to.

Painting by Julia Mehretu
“Excerpt (Riot)”
2003
ink and acrylic on canvas
32 x 54”

Class notes from Reinventing Your Creative Process with Andrew Long, Fall 2007

Tara Donovan
Untitled, 2003 (Detail)
Styrofoam Cups, Hot Glue
6′(H) x 20′(W) x 19′ 2″(D)
Ace Gallery New York

(this from the ACE Gallery – one of my favorite online presences of an already extraordinarily good bricks-and-mortar gallery).

Think of painting from another viewpoint; from up above, from inside.  What’s outside?  Think of things from all directions, paint it from one direction, then another and another, put then all together, leave the history of the object.

When things cross, perhaps they’re laying on a fulcrum?

Use both primary and secondary material.

Class notes from Poetic Non-Representational Acrylic Painting with Andrew Long, Fall 2007

The object in the painting – is it being an object vs. being a facsimile of the object? Does it have a history, a great hook, and richness, a fullness, or is it empty?

What’s the difference between this abstract piece of art and wallpaper?

Matthew Ritchie — “You mostly wait around for things to leak.” -MR, from this Boston Globe article.

Check out Guerra Paints in NY or Nova Paints in CA for large bottle of pre-mixed binder & highly concentrated paints to mix.

To increase interest, drama, contrast, come in with a pure black, white or deeper shade of color to really pop things up in high relief. Try india ink.

Mediums – retarder will make paint work more like oils. Acrylic flow release will break apart the paint. Use GAC100 + water (50-50) to use atomizer.

Use a belt sander with 30-50 grit sandpaper to carve down into the history of your paint. Try a dremel tool.

Jeff Koons has 80 assistants!

Mia Pearlman
MAELSTROM
2008
Paper, India ink, aluminum, monofilament, wire
12′ Dia x 11′ H
Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY

See and read more about the work of Mia Pearlman.

Painting by Terry Winters, just because it’s so frigging beautiful!

Notes in response to the question “Why Do You Create the Art You Create?” posed in the class Poetic Non-Representational Acrylic Painting with Andrew long, Fall 2007

Thoughts and Quotes in response (from several previous classes at SAIC posted earlier in this blog):

An artist needs to be able sustain their penetration to move past a simply available solution to one with greater depth.

The image must convey something special which appeals to the senses through the way it is presented.
Abstract concepts help to convey visual meaning.
The essence of a work lies in its visual meaning.

Aim for the BIG LOOK:

• tough
• brutal
• uncompromising articulation of imagery and idea
• extremes of technique

————————————————————————————————-

Thoughts and notes in response (from a discussion with my husband):

Meaning is a property of symbols – process is a mapping between symbol and what it’s assigned to represent — an experience of a thing or a concept that the reader has to have had.

Shape – how do we identify a shape?  Similar to the process of mapping a symbol.  (think of shapes in a cloud that make recognizable shapes).

“Something for everybody.”

Shapes relate to the notion of structure – an organizing principle or structures – little shapes that make up the whole structure.

Our notion of meaning and structure – parts relate functionally to the whole.

Some writers invoke “how true, how true.”  Other invoke “I see, I see.”  Better to be the kind who invokes “I see, I see.”

Color is more akin to music – it’s not about experience, it is experience.

Music – listeners’ enjoyment has to do with a balance between the expected (or familiar) and the unexpected – maybe 50-50.

Country music is boring because it’s all expected — jazz is uncomfortable because there’s not enough that’s expected.

Country music is to jazz as [Thomas Kincaide] is to abstract art?

Am I saying something?

Argument:

1. hypothesis
2. data
3. interpretation of data (mapping of meaning)

The development is a key aspect of it.

Step – “it follows…”

Early phases – R&D – trial and error.
Then exploring; then becomes more directed as you develop & discover how to discover.

Like the Vikings vs. the navigators (Columbus, etc.) — the Vikings may have discovered America first, but they were only about going out and bumping into things; the navigators knew there was stuff out there to discover, set out to discover them, and developed the techniques to discover (navigation, etc).  They discovered how to discover.

So the ‘let’s go find it’ phase can only come after the ‘bumping into’ phase.

Ontology – stuff from the outside world.

Painting by Joan Snyder
“Magic Meadow”

Class notes from Poetic Non-Representational Acrylic Painting with Andrew Long , Fall 2007

What do you think of when you think of a building?  Do you think of the structure underneath?   Why don’t they call it a “built”?  “Building” is a verb – a process.

Maxine Price – a fellow student’s favorite artist, for layers and colors.

Just make work!  Andrew made over 150 pcs. his first year; he’s now been painting 7 years.

Joan Snyder – who won a MacArthur – does 90% of her paintings in acrylic, top 10% in oil.  See more of her work at this Danforth Museum exhibit and at the Brooklyn Museum exhibit.

Techniques:

• Clear tar – makes acrylics work more like oil.
• Get an ice chopper and cake spatula from restaurant supply store.

Class notes from Reinventing Your Creative Process with Andrew Long, Fall 2007

Jackhammer your myths.

For me, consolidate my careers.  Think about validation.  Making money doesn’t validate your art (yes, but it makes it possible to spend more time doing your art).

Think about, art can be more fun w/o the business end of it.

Think about expectations.

Excuses …back up to find the real cause of an excuse.  Such as, you’re late because…?

• traffic on Mopac.
• No.  Because you didn’t leave on time.
• Because you didn’t ask your boss to leave early.
• Because you hate your job…
• So why are you there?

Throw ‘good’ out the window. It’s all good.

Hole in my bucket where the juice runs out…

Class notes from Reinventing Your Creative Process with Andrew Long, Fall 2007

“One theory of education says that learning is not accumulating information but discarding what your mind doesn’t need.”

from this article in the NY Times

Class notes from Reinventing Your Creative Process with Andrew Long, Fall 2007

Are you what you paint?

Are you painting something external or internal?

Check the library – any book can be sent to the local library from Austin, UT, or ACC’s libraries.

Go to see the Mike show at the Blanton.

Go to:

• Art Palace
• OK Mountain
• Studio 107
• Big Medium (Bolm)
• Lora Reynolds, off West & 3rd (father-in-law is Mickey Kline – 1 of top 10 collectors)

Go see work that you hate.

As a practicing artist today – you – now.

Churn all your influences & interests into the ground. What are you pruning and why?

Tara Donovan
Toothpicks, 2001
Toothpicks Held Together by Friction & Gravity Only
35″(H) x 35″(W) x 35″(D)
Ace Gallery Beverly Hills, 2004

N.Y. Magazine -read Jerry Saltz (critic) articles.

Steven Parrino
Skeletal Implosion 2, 2001
Enamel on canvas
84 x 84 inches (213/4 x 213.4 cm)