School is finally over! This semester has probably been the hardest of my life- I’ve been so sick the entire time. I still loved my classes though, and am so glad to have taken them. My painting class did a study of styles of post impressionism works for our final. We took one photo and interpreted it three ways. I’ve really loved studying the more modern painting approaches, I feel like I’ve learned to appreciate them and how to pick out a crappy one. (so many people think you could just draw a few rectangles on a canvas and be as good as some of the modern masters. Not true!)
However, I must admit that while I’m learning how to appreciate that style of work, I’m having a really hard time actually doing it well! I actually think it’s harder than representational art. So, when you look at my 3rd painting just know that it’s not good. And I know it’s not good. And I’m ok with that 🙂
My first painting (above) is my favorite. It’s based off of the work by Pierre Bonnard, an artist I just recently became familiar with and who has quickly risen to my top favorite artists. I love the colors he uses! And after my last painting where I spent so many hours pulling colors into white fabric, I wanted to try something radical with color. I actually really love how it turned out! The photo really doesn’t do justice to the paint colors (I’ve really got to take a photography class one of these days…).
My second painting is based off of Matisse’s work. I knew of his stuff before this semester and never really thought anything of it until I watched the documentary A Model for Mattisse a couple months ago. Suddenly his simplistic style made sense and I could really appreciate what he was doing. After trying to get a simple painting out like his I can definitely say it’s harder than it looks!
Third painting (bottom) was after the style of Diebenkorn, whose paintings I love. And I absolutely can not recreate. His are so beautiful. I will leave Abstract Expressionism to others from now on :).
