I believe the most important quality of an artist is truly connecting with your own work. Therefore, one’s work must be personal.
Does the work transmit the qualities, the kind of experiences and the intuitions I’m after? Is the painting transmitting the amazing relations of color and light, matter and formation, that painting is able to bring to our eyes and intuition?
The League had been on the brink of closure due to rapidly declining enrollments, and then suddenly found itself not only saved but transformed by an influx of eager GIs.
Too many artists, and way too many people, are bent on impressing more than connecting with others. Impressing is walling yourself off, connecting is letting your guard down, which takes more confidence and guts than the self-effacing get credit for.
I’m always asking myself how it’s possible to create something meaningful from something commonplace. Painting is a way for me to try to prove that poetry, beauty or whatever else you want to call it comes from how you see versus what you see.
Every small meditative thought can contribute to artistic pursuits. In that regard, making coffee and staring out of the window can be considered a part of the creative process. And I do both several times a day.
I suppose I’m not concerned about any one set of questions, but rather concerned about what a painting is capable of doing without written descriptions. What is the vernacular of the picture-making, and how do I express things through that? Some of the best moments are when a painting can describe back to me the feeling of my work just by looking.
An exhibition celebrating how Art Students League grants expand and transform artistic practice
I try to work every day, often doing three or four pen and ink drawings before getting out of bed or before going to sleep. I eat and then stagger into the studio and work and nap and make calls and do chores and then get back to work with the improvements I have been mulling as I did the other chores.
At the League
The Art Students League Presents Its Annual Instructors’ Exhibition
September 9, 2019 0
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This year’s exhibition features nearly one hundred of the League’s diverse faculty and reflects the broad range of approaches and techniques of these contemporary artists.
Getting your art out of the studio and in front of an audience forces you to grow in ways you can’t imagine, especially if you’re procrastinating about exhibiting someday.
Visual Dialogues is an exhibition of work by faculty, students, and alumni of the College of Mt. Saint Vincent that opens May 11 at Blue Door Art Center.