artamaze by Katherine Hilden

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Right Angles and Motion

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged beach, composition, evolution, frogs, horses, illusion, Maria Palacios, motion, narrative, perception, rectangles, squares on November 22, 2014| Leave a Comment »

Yes, it’s all rectangles and squares. What an interesting challenge! Wherever you look, it’s all 90° and you think this should look stable and fixed. Not so. It’s all motion and speed. How do you make a painting consisting of right angles so lively?! Try to look away. Gotcha!

Our visual apparatus evolved to detect motion. Frogs can only see what moves. If you don’t want to be associated with frogs in your family tree, try to remember what it’s like to sit in a train while reading. It’s hard, because your eyes are attracted to the blur and motion at the window. Maybe a painting that simulates the effect of motion holds our attention for the same reason. But this painting does not illustrate motion.
Let’s look at an illustration of motion.

Here we have a specific instance, a narrative of motion. Horses and riders on a beach can evoke the memory of a beach, the smell of the ocean, the energy of young men and the power of horses. Notice that all these are specific memories and as such they’re limited and limiting.
In the painting, our experience is deeper. Without a narrative as a hook and employing a most restrained composition, it moves us to introspect on how perception itself works. We have to ask how this is possible. And that’s endlessly fascinating.
Painting by Maria Palacios, 30×40. Oil on canvas.
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Perspective, Profile, Bottle and Glasses

Posted in faces, Illustration, Still life, Technique and Demo, tagged add on paper, drama, exaggerate, face, glasses, goffy, perception, perspective, profile, spray bottle on October 16, 2012| Leave a Comment »

What the!

Yes, it’s a spray bottle wearing a pair of glasses.

I get paid for thinking up stuff like this.

Let me explain. This exercise combines two topics: perspective and profile. In the previous class we had worked on the topic of perspective. Nothing elaborate, just one-point and two-point perspective, using architectural images to find the vanishing points. For our purposes in this drawing class, perspective is not crucial, but it’s a useful tool. It comes in handy, for example, when you draw a face in three-quarter view. The eye farther away from the viewer (the one behind the bridge of the nose) will be smaller than the eye closer to you. That farther-away eye is tricky to draw, so we didn’t even go there. It’s enough to just get the point of diminished size. And to get that across, I set a pair of glasses on a spray bottle, one combo for each student.

Notice, that the perspective in the glasses is exaggerated in these drawings, according to my instruction. Students are universally reluctant to exaggerate anything for the simple reason that they want to draw what they see. Fine. But to add drama and to make a point, you need to summon the courage to exaggerate. Add that to the lesson in perspective and profile.

All in all, a profitable class. Initially, eyebrows were raised at the goofy sight of spray bottles wearing glasses. Then followed the challenge of getting all the elements together, representationally and technically. The motif only works if the drawing technique is fairly precise and the object is shown matter-of-factly and in its entirety. This is why one student found it necessary to add a strip of paper at the bottom of her initial sheet. A fourth lesson learned: it’s ok to do this, if you run out of paper, just tape on an addition.

I have since learned that one of these drawings has been framed and hung in a law office.

Do this at home: grab a spray bottle, put your glasses on it, reflect on the complexity of reading a face. See? Not goofy at all.

(To enlarge, click on image.)

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Old Shoe

Posted in Achievement, Composition, Illustration, Imagination, literalness, Negative space, Still life, tagged art, black, invention, inversion, perception, seeing, shoe, shoelaces on June 26, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Take a box or a pile of books. Throw some cloth over it, or a t-shirt. Put an old lace-up boot on top of this. Look at this pile, say to yourself “this is really beautiful, I’ve got to draw this.” Turn off your phone, grab a soft pencil and a piece of paper, sit down for a couple of hours and make a work of art.

I didn’t take a shot of the still life, but the above describes its simplicity. How ordinary. How intriguing!

It’s not about documenting the silly boot. It’s about, how can I see this in a new way, surprising myself in the process. As you look at Gaby’s drawing, remind yourself that the boot and the laces were black. She invented the inversion. She chose the placement of the boot way on top and its radical incompletion. The laces set up a paradox: we are reminded of the arbitrariness of their real-life softness and at the same time they appear to support the thing at the top, which we identify as a shoe with the help of the crisscrossing at upper right.

The drawing plays with your perception. Shoe-notshoe. Laces-notlaces. Form-content. As an exercise in seeing, notice repetition of forms, rhythm, positive-negative space. When you’ve said everything about the drawing that you notice, you will still be fascinated by it. You can’t talk this thing to death. It’s art.

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Without You, I’m Nothing

Posted in Galleries, Imagination, inspiration, tagged consciousness, Gonzales-Torres, Luna Negra Dance, MCA, perception, Robert Irwin on March 5, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Is this woman being rescued by this man? Did she just faint, overcome by the beauty of Carl Andre’s steel tiles on the floor (lower left)?

This is a museum scene. Specifically, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, a week ago. The Luna Negra Dance Company performed in the gallery space that day–interacting with the exhibit pieces–and I happened to catch it. I filmed part of the performance with my little pocket camera. (See link at end of this post.)

Seeing professional dancers bopping, banging, hugging, lying on, sliding and slithering around art work in museum galleries in the middle of the day was a special treat. But actually, for me, the museum experience always involves observing other museum goers. I have a romantic, modernist sensibility. That means that the question “What Is Art” is always an issue. When I observe other people in museums and galleries, I always wonder if they’re thinking “Is This Art?” I wonder how they relate to these objects and what expectations they bring with them when they enter the museum.

In the 19^th century skyscrapers were called “cathedrals of commerce” and museums were called “cathedrals of culture” or “cathedrals of art.” Doesn’t that sound like ancient history! We don’t hear that kind of cathedral talk nowadays. People who expect to encounter the sacred and find a pile of gravel on the floor, are either offended or they’re prompted to redefine the sacred. How about Félix Gonzáles-Torres’s hill of candy in the corner, where you’re invited to take a piece. Where’s the grand cathedral feeling in that?

Modern and Contemporary Art requires the reaction of the viewer for its completion. It doesn’t give you the answer, it doesn’t reassure, it doesn’t confirm your old assumptions. Instead, it asks questions. In that respect it’s actually rather Socratic—talk about the ancients. A visit to the art museum gives your brain a work out. The MCA is very explicit on this topic. On one side of the wall: “Without you;” on the other side: “I’m nothing.” The YOU here is the audience, the museum goer, the art observer.

A Robert Irwin piece has this quote next to it>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Consciousness, perception. Big words? Abstract concepts? No, it’s where we live. Everybody. The MCA looks more like a playground than a cathedral. That’s good, because if we’re going to reflect about perception and consciousness, we better be relaxed.

Get off your knees. Hop skip jump.

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