SPIRIT was painted (in acrylic) circa 2007 as a demo piece. MOVEMENT! Composition! Balance!! Color!!! Techniques! I was teaching high school art students in Venice. It was at that time that I saw in my students firsthand something I had been told in 2001 (by the Lady on Westward Beach) when I first began painting ~ “You paint who you are!” Those children proved that true again and again with every drawing, painting and sculpture.
The child drawing gothic buildings and portraits wore a long dark black coat to class - even though it was summer. The child whose renderings of buildings were precise down to every last minute detail was as meticulous in his dress and habits. And so on and so forth around the room. Free or rigid; colorful or camouflaged; studied or exploratory ….. what each individual put on paper and canvas that wasn’t just uniquely theirs but was actually uniquely them. The artist and his or her work were inseparable!!
That summer I also learned something important about “teaching art” - and that lesson can be summarized in a word, “Don’t!” It’s okay to teach/learn technique. But the most interesting art is an exploration - of technique, of substrate and of medium, of color, of composition, of all the things that go into creating something new. And most importantly, art is an exploration of self…. of identity…. of who we are as individuals or who we strive to become.
That summer in Venice I was teaching a little and learning a lot more - not about the artwork of dozens of young artists, but about the identity of the young men and women behind the art and inside or reflected in the art.
The child drawing gothic buildings and portraits wore a long dark black coat to class - even though it was summer. The child whose renderings of buildings were precise down to every last minute detail was as meticulous in his dress and habits. And so on and so forth around the room. Free or rigid; colorful or camouflaged; studied or exploratory ….. what each individual put on paper and canvas that wasn’t just uniquely theirs but was actually uniquely them. The artist and his or her work were inseparable!!
That summer I also learned something important about “teaching art” - and that lesson can be summarized in a word, “Don’t!” It’s okay to teach/learn technique. But the most interesting art is an exploration - of technique, of substrate and of medium, of color, of composition, of all the things that go into creating something new. And most importantly, art is an exploration of self…. of identity…. of who we are as individuals or who we strive to become.
That summer in Venice I was teaching a little and learning a lot more - not about the artwork of dozens of young artists, but about the identity of the young men and women behind the art and inside or reflected in the art.