These images are from a week-long intensive art course I just completed at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. It is the same number of hours as a semester-long class, so we worked from 9 to 6 every day. It was taught by Robert Siegelman, who was amazing. I made a lot of things that I never imagined I would have made, and went about art in general pretty differently, which was rather refreshing. We focused very little on technique or skill, and paid much more attention to emotions and purpose and experimentation.
Everything is based on the figure, some more literally than others, some only very loosely, but the figure certainly acted as a theme that tied everything together. These 5 images were based on quick, gestural poses, using acrylic and some soft pastel on paper. Another big theme was translating negative spaces into positive shapes, so even if the figure is not obvious, there are usually lots of figural elements in the pieces.
These pieces were also done after spending some time with a few Ellsworth Kelly books (props to Seal Stone Craver for the suggestion). Specifically, I was looking at his contour drawings of leaves and plants. His works are elegantly simple, and take the object out of its context, leaving a skeleton line drawing behind. But there is usually enough information to recognize the object, or at least to believe that he had the object in front of him.
2 comments:
Hi Blake, I was just forwarded this from a former student. Thanks for the compliment ! your work and sight looks great on this blog. Nice to see the other pieces as well. Keep up the good work. Bob
Pretty interesting stuff. I liked the figure among the blue, very well done.
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