Well, we moved, so that took up several months of time... the new digs are further away from the city, which has its ups and downs. A long drive to master classes, but they're down to only 2 per month now that Brian has decided to pare down his teaching time. It creates something of a gap in my drawing/painting though, since I seem to need the group to pull me along - I rarely draw and/or paint unless I have to. Always seems to be something 'more important' to do - something to ponder.
A few weeks ago, I received an invite to a workshop put on by a couple of friends exploring abstract ideas in painting - not my comfort zone at all, so - good challenge. The instructor, Kim Lee Kho was one of Brian's first master class students, and a gifted teacher in her own right. The weekend was enlightening and I found myself getting into it more than I expected.
The painting above came about from first drawing a black & white composition from a series of random instructions (with the caveat that no questions about the directions would be answered) - things like, make a geometric shape somewhere on your page... now make another shape, 50% of that size. Now make a different shape and make that one 20% larger ('larger than which shape?', you might ask - hence the 'no questions' variable). After completing the instructions we were given 'prompts' from a jar that Kim had pre-filled... everyone's prompt was different - one of my friends pulled 'obliterate 50% of what you've done' from the jar - I pulled 'make it ugly' - which had me covering pretty much everything on my page with white gesso and what I thought were random, scratchy black marks then finishing off with a coat of coarse, sandlike medium, resulting in... something. oddly. beautiful...
Two days after the abstraction workshop, I attended an evening called 'Canvas, Corks & Cocktails' put on by an old friend who now co-owns a lovely gallery in Port Perry. It was a fun night where everyone painted the same composition from her instructions... a cash bar and some great music put together by a local DJ rounded out the evening... the resulting painting is nothing remotely abstract, but let's not get smug - there's room for all kinds of art making, right? Even if it is a 'birch tree painting' ;-)
A few weeks ago, I received an invite to a workshop put on by a couple of friends exploring abstract ideas in painting - not my comfort zone at all, so - good challenge. The instructor, Kim Lee Kho was one of Brian's first master class students, and a gifted teacher in her own right. The weekend was enlightening and I found myself getting into it more than I expected.
The painting above came about from first drawing a black & white composition from a series of random instructions (with the caveat that no questions about the directions would be answered) - things like, make a geometric shape somewhere on your page... now make another shape, 50% of that size. Now make a different shape and make that one 20% larger ('larger than which shape?', you might ask - hence the 'no questions' variable). After completing the instructions we were given 'prompts' from a jar that Kim had pre-filled... everyone's prompt was different - one of my friends pulled 'obliterate 50% of what you've done' from the jar - I pulled 'make it ugly' - which had me covering pretty much everything on my page with white gesso and what I thought were random, scratchy black marks then finishing off with a coat of coarse, sandlike medium, resulting in... something. oddly. beautiful...
Two days after the abstraction workshop, I attended an evening called 'Canvas, Corks & Cocktails' put on by an old friend who now co-owns a lovely gallery in Port Perry. It was a fun night where everyone painted the same composition from her instructions... a cash bar and some great music put together by a local DJ rounded out the evening... the resulting painting is nothing remotely abstract, but let's not get smug - there's room for all kinds of art making, right? Even if it is a 'birch tree painting' ;-)
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