Alison Ruttan, who fit the stereotype of the New Yorker that she was, made me a little self conscious at times. She was not a painter herself in practice, but she did know everything about contemporary painting. Considering herself more of a conceptually driven artist she chooses her media as it relates to her intentions therefore her body of work was diverse and included video, digital, porcelain and sound. She was blunt but not mean spirited, perceptive, and unapologetically honest about her opinions but up for debate and respectful of difference….all qualities I really admire in a person. According to Alison, the narrative approach that I had been using in my paintings evoked a false sense of intimacy, tended to be sentimental (which is apparently the WORST thing a painter can be) and were a little too perfectly proportioned and balanced which undermined the dissonance, ambiguity, cognitive complexity and dark tension that I purported to be interested in.
* She referred me to Amy Sillman, Monique Prieto, Thomas Nozkowski among many others.
Richard Hull was easy to be around and i felt really comfortable talking to him about painting. Almost a little too comfortable at times, and I fear I tended to ramble on and on about things I know relatively little about. Richard was a painter. He worshiped light, shadows, space, form, perspective, movement, mark making, the details and lack of details. He seemed like a deeply spiritual person without at all being religious and took us to the museum all the time. This may be a little cliché but the museum was cleary his "church" and Titian, Carpaccio, Caravaggio, Goya, all saints perfect & flawed.
His advice to me was to sloooow down, consider the impact of each mark, simplify. He had similar criticisms of my work as Alison, but emphasized that he felt that I had really good instincts as a painter, with obvious strengths and potential. He said I should trust myself a little more.
*and yes it’s fair to say that I had a huge crush on Richard. I feel tingly.
Here are a few paintings made during class:
you loooove him.
ReplyDeletelove to see other artist's work in progress. I really like the colors in the last two paintings...I like where they're all going. I had a mini-crush on one of my grad school art professors; I think it makes the process of going to class, critiques, and working more interesting.
ReplyDeleteBTW, I enjoyed reading the story of your wedding on your friend's blog...hope that doesn't come across as too stalker-ish : )