Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Bringing Thought into Art

My art relies heavily on intuition and spontaneity. Since taking my studio courses at UVic, I have been noticing that my art lacks something: concept. Sure, you could argue that using your intuition, spontaneity, and such is a concept. But that seems like the slacker answer. I don't think I'd want my art to be totally cerebral because that's not who, how, what I am, but it would be interesting to see how concept mixes and mingles with intuition.
I have an opportunity to test this out with my latest drawing project. We have been asked to revisit, rethink, revise a piece of visual art that we respond to. I've decided to chose a piece by Wassily Kandinsky because it was in learning about his paintings that I was really pushed to start painting myself.
Composition, 1913, Wassily Kandinsky
Right off the top, a few things to consider are translating the form and hue of the painting into greys (black and white drawing assignment . . . unless I can convince my prof to let me use a little colour :). Second is that is seems to me that all of the action of the painting is happening at once. One of the things about Kandinsky's paintings is that they are loosely paralleled to music (like itunes visualizer . . . hmm) so I'd like to see the drawing unfold in way that makes reference to time. Perhaps in a scroll or multiple grounds.
So when I pressented this idea to my prof, she made two comments: 1. rythme is important in the piece and 2. i should consider social and philosophical changes in the world since 1913 that would account for the revision of this piece.
So lots of interesting questions to ask myself with regards to this piece. I'd better get on it too cuz it's due on Monday . . . and i've still got one more painting to finish for my solo show coming up on the 17th eeeeps!

Things to consider about my philosophy about life and art: 1. what is my basic philosophy of life (i should articulate it) 2. what is my worldview, relation to natural world, 3. what values do I hold dear. Hmm . . . will probably need coffee (or something stronger) to wrestle with issues by Monday :)

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