Paintings

This term I’m in Painting 4 (I jumped over Painting 3, which I’ll be taking in September) and am having a great time.

First painting of the term is complete. We voted in class on the theme and it was a mash-up of Space and Ocean, and all the paintings are 24×24″. I did a ghost ship sailing into the blood moon which was inspired by the lunar eclipse a couple of weeks ago. I’m really pleased with it.

All of the paintings from this year two project will be up in a gallery space in the College. Probably most of this calendar year based on how long the current paintings have been up. I will be getting photos of it on display! Hope to be able to get some as we are hanging them too.

This week we start the next project which is a diptych at a minimum. We can do as many canvasses as we want up to 52″ square per canvas. We are stretching our own and the stretcher bars available go from 20″ up to 52″ so we can pick our dimensions.

I’ve been scribbling down ideas for it and doing some research for images. I think I have a pretty good idea – I’ll see what the professor thinks in class on Thursday.

I am really not a fan of painting big canvases – not because they scare me, but I have no where to put them. I could just abandon them at school, like so many past students have, I suppose. But when I put an effort into something I like to know it is being appreciated somewhere! Leaving it behind seems almost like abandoning a child.

I finally finished my big painting started in 2D Art & Design last semester. I went in early on Friday and spent four hours working on it in the studio. I think it is done now. It is based on a photograph I took on my trip to Morocco in 2017. I settled on 20×38″ – that was as big as I wanted to get – I have a place to hang it, I hope. I measured and it should work. I’ll have to move some smaller works somewhere else, but that is easy.

I’m not sure if I’m developing a style of my own. I don’t feel like I am. But I’ve always had a hard time seeing it in my own work. People would always comment on my style in face and body painting, which I didn’t see.  I would ask them to describe it to me! I can look back at my work and see it now, in retrospect, but I don’t necessarily see it while I’m actively doing it.

I hope to figure out what my style is by the end of this term.  Every time I start a painting that I intend to do in say, impressionist style for example, I suddenly realize while I’m painting that I swerved away from that intent. So, I probably DO have a style I guess. I just don’t know what it is yet!