Tuesday, June 17, 2014

A THOUGHTFUL CRITIQUE FROM MY PARTNER


Eileen, my artist and artful spouse, offered a good critique of my re-emerging process with drawing and painting last night – basically, let the work talk to you, don’t force ideas on it, don’t get clever.

Same with subject, if I extend her thoughts – for example, does a work have to have a social justice theme all the time? Yet, I scan the internet for social-justice related photos and my photos and films from our human rights work for images to work from, start from anyway.

I’m drawn to the Fauvist, Social Realism and Ashcan schools in art right now but I don’t want to mimic them. Still early in this return to these art forms for me. I need to allow for discovery and spontaneous collaboration between me and the work and the subject and my capabilities and the medium, to keep in mind what Eileen said.

Thinking about my age in all this, too, 77, soon to be 78 -- so odd.

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