Well despite Old Man Winter slapping us about pretty good the spring semester has kicked off to a very frosty start at PAFA. I'm now on the run to finish my 3rd year and my big show at the annual ASE in May. This means I have a lot of painting to do--but that's the fun part!
I am taking only three classes this semester to allow me more time for working and I have to always balance my painting vs my freelance work such as the Judge Parker strip and things like layout Magnus for Dark Horse. I am also teaching the Illustration class for the PAFA High School Art Program once again, so once again my plate is pretty dam full! I have one drawing and two painting classes, the drawing and one painting class with Mike Gallagher and a painting class with Alex Kanevsky
This painting I started the first week of class when Peter Van Dyke subbed for Alex. I fought with it again last week and I might continue to bash it about or start fresh.
This drawing was for Mike Gallagher's drawing class. The assignment was repetition and we visited the museum at school to view one of the current shows and we had to do a piece in response to an artists work in the show. I choose two artists, Mia Rosenthal and Jim Houser, and to be honest, while I a not a huge fan of the work of either one of these artists I "get" what their work is about. Rosenthal's work is based on a repetition of images that are have an almost symbol like quality which are all hand drawn. She employs a thin, fragile and delicate unwavering pen line, which gives the drawings a delicate quality almost akin to a blueprint or fashion pattern. They remind me of the type of drawings you might also see in a teenage girls notebook or journal. Alone each drawing isn’t very powerful or even commanding, yet through the repeating of the image/symbols in an almost oriental fashion she create a pattern of movement that is very similar to a Chinese scroll.
Jim Houser’s work is very different that the work of Rosenthal’s. Houser’s work has a comic book feel about it similar to artist such as Charles Burns and Chris Ware as well as distinct melancholy atmosphere about it. His work is a combination of single comic panel and puzzle-like images and writing that feel like you spiced up some underground comic and pasted it together so the narrative was now out of context; a poetry of sad panels. So it's easy to see why his work might be the kind of work I would respond too being a cartoonist. However most modern art just either bores me or makes me sad and just fills me with an overwhelming dread. We all have our likes and dislikes.
Some of my fellow student's work exploring themes based on the woek of other artits they choose for the assignment.
This class is going to be about exploring a lot of the modernet's aesthetics and themes that run in modern art or the current art world, so I will give it my best despite the fact I really dislike most of the work you see in the modern art magazines and museums or events like the Whitney Biannual.
Scott Noel is setting the tone right away by working on this huge painting on the fourth floor. He's there fighting with this monster every day...for all to see and i think be inspired by.
I'm finally getting back into painting in the studio after a long break because I had so much work to do as far as comics and for Disney, now I'm going to be back in the cage swinging away till the ASE.
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