Kristine Moran: love

Holy hell this painter is incredible!

One of the ones Amanda recommended for me after my first post! I looked her up about two weeks ago and am thoroughly excited to write about her.

These two paintings in particular (entitled "The World is Yours" and "Flash Flood") are really helpful concerning problems I'm having regarding my interior painting.

I think I've been going about it all wrong: I've been trying to incorporate abstraction right off the bat with brush stroke and texture, making my painting awkward and stagnant. Instead I think I should try doing something similar to what Kristine is doing: she starts light and fairly simple and realistic, and then lets herself go totally crazy on top of it. I think my biggest problem regarding painting is my tendency to rush. I have extremely high standards set for myself, and then when they aren't reached immediately I rush, thus screwing up the painting. Frustrated, and convinced I've ruined it, I give up on it or finish in a hurry so I don't have to look at it anymore. It's very silly, and I think if I just slowed down and enjoyed the process more I would have a much better outcome.

Kristine Moran has also done something pretty admirable with color: she's taken green such a long way, really varying the tones and values but with such subtlety! It's pretty breath-taking. She also really has texture down, able to get thick spots without making it look excessive of overworked. This artist's work has been extremely helpful and enjoyable for me to look at. Moran definitely makes the types of paintings that I aspire to make some day: that effortless sense of depth and her sensibility of texture blow my mind :)

confusion/backed up research

I'm having a really difficult time. My mind is overflowing with ideas, but none of them translate, none of them connect and none of them mean anything beyond sudden little splurges of emotional imagery.

When I try to work I have these delusions of grandeur as to what my painting will look like, but my impatience makes me rush and the result is never satisfying. It's a cycle I seem to have fallen into that's extremely hard to get out of. It's dysfunction at its best and that is very frustrating.

I've been doing a fairly diligent job of keeping track of artists in my sketchbook, but for some reason have been procrastinating translating them onto the blog (therefore I apologize in advance for the sudden rash of posts).

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Review of "playing fields" lecture

I found Ryan Schneider's work to be very aesthetically exciting and interesting. The colors were fantastic; I was amazed how pure and vibrant they were despite clearly being mixed values. Compositionally he took a lot of risks, lots of sharp angles and repetition of shapes; everything, including his figures and interiors were completely jagged and vicious, very confrontational.

I was particularly drawn to "Snowed Out/Snowed In" (shown above), probably because of its ambiguity, while I felt that a lot of his other paintings were too clearly personal for an audience to relate to. There was a kind of mysterious dysfunction to everything he painted (with the exception of "Snowed Out/Snowed In") that I found intriguing until he started talking more about his processes and inspiration. To be honest I found much of what he said to be very superficial and quite disappointing given how peculiar his paintings were.

He spoke a lot about drinking and partying with his friends, being hung over, and fighting with his girlfriend as the majority of his inspiration, and while I'm sure most people can relate to these things from time to time in their lives, it was very disappointing to me that he chose to focus on these dysfunctional habits as the basis for his creative process, as though highlighting them and telling his viewers "this is all I am." It might seem a bit harsh, but the general impression I got from Mr. Schneider was that his life consisted mainly of partying. After that it was hard for me to take his work seriously because I felt as though he was giving an awful lot of meaning and symbolism to something that he probably should have outgrown when he was done with college.

What I learned from this is that it's better for me to know little to nothing about an artist's intentions when viewing their art, because if I am not satisfied with them it makes it hard for me to continue to appreciate what they have produced.