So I discovered Vincent van Gogh. I read about his life several times, stared at his art, considered his philosophy, and realised that the great painters were just like any of us, products of their time, with perhaps a little more mind altering substances at hand.
Taking a break from my Retrospective posts tonight because I’ve been wrapped up in an argument between Instagram, my new Android phone and my iPad. But before I rave about what is going wrong, I have to say something about what is going right.
I’m not a follower, but neither am I a leader. I’m that black sheep in a sea of white who cuts across all the orderly lines and spins them into swirls. I’m the one who when told to do something, immediately wants to do the opposite.
And this was my second attempt. I think something clicked, though I’m still not one hundred percent sure. The closest I could get to the requested concept was to pixelate the image and place each of the colours side by side, mixing, if necessary, on the palette, not the painting. It was the only logic I could find.
Around the beginning of the 20th century, after Impressionism, Monet, Renoir, Post-Impressionism, Van Gogh and Toulouse-Lautrec, French art was faced with an exhibition that took the concepts dreamt up by those two previous movements and artists and took them one step further. This was the time of Matisse.
I have been attending a small, private art school since the beginning of the year. Focussing solely on painting, I think after three terms that I can now declare myself a real painter 😀 I have learn a huge pile of stuff, mostly about myself and what my style seems to favour, what I like painting and what I don’t, and practise, lots of practise, has done me wonders.
