Full Steam Ahead – This Week at the Academy

I chose today’s title in part because at 6am this morning, my weather app said it already felt like 27 degrees Celsius (81 F) out there…  the heat wave continues.

I also chose it because the energy and enthusiasm continues in class this week – both for Amanda Sage’s workshop and for our graduation exhibition.  I’ve been working hard on both beyond workshop times, so by evening, I’ve opted out of the wonderful opportunities Amanda opened up for participants, some of whom have come from very far. Yesterday, they went to De Es’s studio for a visit (I was running around looking for staples for the staple gun to stretch my huge painting, but I had been there in May ).  On Tuesday evening, she brought some of the students to the Fuchs Villa (see previous post) to spend time with the professor.  He had come to the studio earlier in the day to share a recently published book about the Rosary Paintings that had been used for the design of a stamp.  He is always an honoured guest in our classroom.

The most fun, of course, has been the painting.  Amanda spent some time going over the portrait – always a useful demonstration/exercise. Some students chose to focus on this.  Instead, I decided to work on 2 paintings that I believe are now finished.  The first is “Mountain Spirit“, a small canvas board that I started working on during our first day together.  After the fun of creating an abstract background, I started pulling out the mountains (a developing skill that’s essential for the Mischtechnik). The strong mountain spirit spontaneously came into being in my more graphic style – no planning, tracing, etc.  It was good to just follow the creative flow.  Amanda is great at suggesting ways in which my style can evolve to incorporate more value contrast, etc. It went through a lot of stages, but I only took these 2 photos.  I really like this piece.  There’s a bit of a gold shimmer in the moon that you can’t really see here.

This next piece, however, is where most of my time was spent in the last 3 days.  May I introduce you to “Dance of Gratitude“.  I had created the abstract background in Bali on a 40 cm x 50cm board and wanted to work again with the figure I developed in Italy.  This painting truly incorporates my year of international travel and learning. I had gone about painting the figure the hard way in Italy and decided to simply turn my sketch into a stencil this time. The sky and foreground simply emerged from the abstract patterns in the background.  With every layer of white, Amanda would suggest another – I learned a lot with this piece.  There must be 8-10 layers of white in the sky (and several glazes) to achieve the gradients of transparent to bright opaque rays you see here. There’s also a lot of iridescent gold paint that doesn’t show up in the photos …. something I am eternally drawn to use.  Interestingly, Amanda suggested the dots, which is something I used to use a lot in Canada.  I’m definitely seeing how what I’m learning this year can be successfully integrated into my old style.  I do love this piece!  It was meditative to create and plunged me right back into the state of elation I felt creating “Spirit of Umbria‘ in Italy.  I’ll be adding Dance of Gratitude to the Silent Auction this weekend.  I’ll also have more for the Pay What You Want Table by the end of this workshop, I’m sure.