It is strange, given I work in London and am on an Art Degree, that this was my first visit to the National Gallery. In visiting the Gallery I needed to focus, at least to a degree, and so I chose to consider primarily Landscape images. That didn’t restrict me too much, as there are large numbers of them in there, but it at least allowed me to have a meaningful approach.
Continue reading “Visit to the National Gallery”
We were recently in Bruges for the Wintervonken (Winter sparks) festival. As we were there for a few days we also decided to get a general “Museum Pass” – which turned out to be a very good plan. We spent quite a bit of the trip looking at Art in the Museums.
Continue reading “Brugge Art Galleries”
The featured image was taken as I walked across the famous wobbly bridge from St Paul’s Cathedral across to the Tate Modern gallery. I was going to meet up with an OCA tutor and group of students to see the Modigliani exhibition. We met up with the tutor Gerald Deslandes, and received a brief introduction and then went on in. Although I went in with two others we didn’t stay together for long, though met up a few times around the show.
Used Corel Paint Essentials to do a bit of painting directly onto the image. Although this is off-spec for the brief, I’m expecting to need to do some of this to help blend the drawn figures into the landscape. No real attempt here to make high-quality drawings. More a case of playing with the medium.
http://michelleshuff.com/sheep-landscape/
Consideration based on “Making Sense of Art History“.  I’ve selected this approach as a basis to see if it helps me consider the work in a deeper sense. Continue reading “Analysis: Sheep landscape by Michelle Shuff”
Well, I guess I had to get back here sooner or later. Interestingly, however, I think this approach to finding his work at least helps me understand it to a degree. I think I am also starting to understand why I don’t “get it.” My tutor described Pollock as “a painter’s painter”, and I have never really had a serious attempt at painting. This (to my mind) limits my ability to appreciate a body of work that is essentially about the action of making a painting in different ways. Continue reading “In the Studio: Jackson Pollock”
Continuing on the “In the Studio” series, the focus has moved to de Kooning.
The initial video is about de Kooning’s style and approach. Here the artist is an “Action Painter” with major gestural marks on a large format and working with the “physicality of the medium”. This is explained in the videos as using the liquid and viscous properties of different paints and paint blends to get effects. Continue reading “In the Studio: Willem de Kooning”
Back in April this course was suggested on one of the OCA groups: https://www.coursera.org/learn/painting, and so I signed up for it. The idea of the course is a set of videos and material about the New York School of art, which includes approaches of seven New York School artists, including Willem de Kooning, Yayoi Kusama, Agnes Martin, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Ad Reinhardt, and Mark Rothko. I thought of this as an opportunity to learn to appreciate these artists more clearly. In some ways it is working. Continue reading “In the Studio: Postwar Abstract Painting!”
I managed to visit the British Museum over the weekend, visiting the African Art and Picasso prints exhibitions. They were both worthy of the time, which much to recommend them. Continue reading “British Museum: African Art”
David Howard, OCA Drawing 1 