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.
Life has been busy of late, but there has been art. There have also been business developments, a piece of artwork I can’t share as I’ve submitted it to a competition, and various explorations in both bubblepainting and Pollock-esque paint delivery. More on those later, but now…The Squid Report!
An art book recommendation, a watercolour palette, a new painting, a thunderstorm encounter and inspiring sea glass. It has been an interesting week.
The other arty thing that happened this week was me being suddenly struck by an undefined inspiration that ended up with my youngest daughter falling off the couch.
It has been a week of calamari here in my studio. All other projects have been suspended by my current obsession with this giant squid painting.
Met an artist, listened to an illustrator, ate dinner with an arty friend, received an arty book and painted a giant squid. Yeah, a very arty week.
I am having a love affair with iridescent gel. I can’t seem to get away from it, not that I want to. I can’t help but throw some into almost all my paintings at the moment. I just love the lustre.
The biggest thing for me that I’m learning at the moment is to trust my skill. I have to believe that no matter what I do it will work out somehow. It may look like crud at some points, but if I keep going, I can make it work. I’m an artist, I can do this! (This is my mantra…and it is working :D).
It is so wonderful to have some sunny weather to paint in. Last weekend I grabbed my acrylics and set up on the back porch and threw together to beginnings of a randomish painting (mainly because the canvas I’m using has a thread pull in it and I had to wait for the other two I’d gessoed to dry). Didn’t know what I wanted to paint, I just slapped it down. It is wonderfully freeing, especially since the canvas was a dud one so it didn’t matter what I did to it, I couldn’t use it to make saleable art anyway.
