Art Critique July 2012

This was a night where we could take some time to look at the work, talk about the exploration of art and discuss the struggles in finding ways of expressing our artistic scheme as a cohesive unit;  this was particularly Socratic since it was just Ron and I.

Ron brought two pieces that explored the contrary nature and inner dialog of shapes.  Within the motif lies a large wedge like structure contrasted against an organic flower like object.  This sets up a certain dialog against the two; one being hard versus the other being soft in nature.  The contrast of light is also very interesting which is well handled within the medium of watercolor.  The boldness of the piece is very attractive, yet the clear separation of the object is less attractive.  We talked about shifting some of the values and color consistencies to bring the objects together as much as possible.  All in all though, the expressive mark-making is excellent and adds to the expressive nature of the work.

The other painting looked like an explosion of some sort with plumes of smoke, orbits forming and jet streams of energy passing throughout the work.  The chaos of the work presupposes a unique problem of finding a thematic foundation for the work; what is it about?  The title of the work is ‘Universe 1’ which seems appropriate for such an astro-dynamic beginning (if this was the intent).  What stood out was the variety of technique, which I personally consider to be a big challenge in watercolor.  The lack of a clear un-ambiguous direction was not so well received, but as in any exploratory work, the ambiguity gives purpose to having to work the idea out.  Ron agrees that it could be a bit bolder like the previous watercolor, but the free nature of the work is what best sets this piece apart.

I showed my last work associated with the Shipley Center Spot 13.  It is a monoprint using plexiglass and a woodblock to create the work.  We spent a good amount of time talking about the background tree line and how the shifting of value from the foreground did much for creating depth in a realistic way.  The color did not have the same intensity or saturation that some of the other works from this series had (talked about in past critiques).  In addition, more separation of the objects could further enhance the interest of the work.  What didn’t need to be change was the mark-making in the monoprint technique, which we thought added a great amount of character to the piece.

Again, as in all these critiques, much was gained by sitting down and looking hard at our work.  This is something that anyone reading this blog should leave with the desire to do.  And as always, we look forward to increasing our circle of friends.  In order to join the critique, please review the front-page for the date and time of the next critique session and contact me at info@reekersart.com