Taking a class on Portrait Painting with master painter Michael Maczuga has been an amazing experience. There are 13 students in a smallish space in the classroom at Cole Gallery in Edmonds. You can see Michael’s work at http://michaelmaczuga.com/
Taking classes awakens your awareness to new ways of doing things, new ways of thinking and the opportunity to “hand out” with other artists. First day was challenging, but second day was fun! Today should be more of both: Challenging and Fun!!
In an interview in July, Mr. Hamlisch talked about the emotional investment he put into each piece of music he composed.
“I’m not one of those people who says, ‘I never read reviews,’ because I don’t believe those people,” Mr. Hamlisch said. “I think they read ‘em. These songs are my babies. And I always say, it’s like having a baby in a hospital, taking a Polaroid and going up to someone and saying, ‘What do you think?’ And he goes, ‘I give you a 3.’ That’s what criticism is like. You’ve worked on this thing forever – ‘I give you a 3.’ And it’s part of you. That’s the bargain you’ve made.”
This is often how artists feel about their work. When critiquing work, who is the expert, why are they the expert and are they really any better than you.
The NY Times tells us Mr. Hamlisch won seemingly every award available in each medium. He was a 12-time Academy Award nominee, for his score and song contributions to films like “The Spy Who Loved Me” and “Sophie’s Choice,” and a three-time Oscar winner for the score of “The Sting” as well as the score from “The Way We Were” and its title song (with lyrics by Alan and Marilyn Bergman). He won four Emmy Awards and four Grammy Awards, as well as a Tony Award for his score to the musical “A Chorus Line.” That musical, which blended bouncy, brassy songs like “One” and “Dance: Ten; Looks: Three” with melancholy numbers like “At the Ballet,” also won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1976.
What an amazingly talented artist!
Back to the class taken yesterday and today with Casey Klahn. Here is the question. Should you take classes from someone with whom you respect their art for they are an award winning artist, but you do not agree with their philosophy or style?
That is a question I had to ask myself after this last weekend. How do you feel about the critique from someone whose view on the art world is no where near the same as yours. Is art education and knowledge a plus or a minus.
There is SO much information available that one can tune to meet their personal need, do you agree because it is easier or do speak up for you disagree?
When I was teaching at The Art Institute of Seattle, I would tell my students that anything written in a book is only one persons opinion, it is not always fact and certainly not written in stone. People tend to believe anything that is written, but that does not make it the truth.
We are all a combination of what we read, what we feel and what we think we know.
These are both pastels from todays class. It was a “learning” experience.
Friday was a relaxing day painting in the studio with five other artists. Several of us worked on the same photo to emphasize how to paint white. This was a small and simple drawing, but it once again showed that white is not just white. White is a combination of colors that work in contrast to adjacent colors.
“White…is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black…God paints in many colours; but He never paints so gorgeously, I had almost said so gaudily, as when He paints in white.” — G. K. Chesterton
“The first of all single colors is white … We shall set down white for the representative of light, without which no color can be seen; yellow for the earth; green for water; blue for air; red for fire; and black for total darkness.” — Leonardo Da Vinci
“ELOQUENCE, n. The art of orally persuading fools that white is the color that it appears to be. It includes the gift of making any color appear white.” — Ambrose Bierce
“Black and white are absolute…expressing the most delicate vibration, the most profound tranquility, and unlimited profundity.” — Shiko Munakata
“Never use pure white; it doesn’t exist in nature.” — Aldro T. Hibbard
“The great black and white draftsman, the sculptor, and the blind man know that form and color are separate. The form itself is what the blind man knows…Color is surface skin that fits over the form.” — John Sloan
“White covers a multitude of sins.” — Jonathan Milne
The Pastel world is a whole new adventure for me. For any artist it s good to expand your horizons and try new things. Sometimes you will be successful and other times walk away at the end of the day wondering about the experience.
What we need to know is that every artist has an opinion about art and we don’t necessarily have to tie into or agree with that opinion. An educated artist, which many of us are, does not immediately agree or disagree with another artists philosophy, for that is what it is. It is their world and possibly not yours.
Each and everyone of us has a valuable opinion and when we take classes we need to realize the instructor is only a venue for us to view things from his or her perspective, give a new or different slant on our knowledge, acknowledge their expertise and realize we may view the world through entirely different eyes.
Creativity is subtraction, but you chose to subtract may be different from anyone else. I once read that nothing is more paralyzing than the idea of limitless possibilities. Constraints or limits sometimes help us create.
Dr. Seuss wrote The Cat in the Hat with only 236 different words. His editor challenged him he couldn’t write a book with only 50 different words. He won by writing Green Eggs and Ham, one of the bestselling books of all times.
“Telling yourself you have all the time in the world, all the money in the world, all the colors in the palette, anything you want – that just kills creativity.”
~Jack White
Using a photo from my Facebook friend Gary Hamburgh, I painted this scene form the Lavender Festival in Sequim. The lavender was so light it took on an eire pale pink tint.
