And so the third year of my undergrad in the certificate program is written into the record books. My painting are all hung on my wall for the Annual Student Exhibition or ASE and my postcards and new business card are at the printers--all the "i's" and "t's" are dotted and crossed. The last few weeks have been a real whirlwind between finishing the paintings and framing them, then getting them hung and staying up with the strip. It was like having 3 jobs at the same time, but for now it's all done and things can get cleaned up around here and I can meet and greet the buyers, patrons and the public next Thursday and Friday when the show opens.
Here I am posing in front of my wall with everything hung except the final big Super sad painting which we had to use the lift for.
Having this experience of hanging my fist ASE wall was made a lot of fun and way easier by having my friends also hanging along with me. For Joel and dave it's thier swan song at school, for Jane and myself it's our first. We all helped each other hang our walls and it was a much better and easier experience doing this than if I had done it myself. Will and dave really helped me out with my wall and it made the process fun, artists really should work more in groups, I saw many a solo artist fretting over their wall but we Dirty Palette members, Jane, Joel, Dave and Will were there to help each other out. It's funny in a way to suddenly see the work hung up in the museum, all those months of hard work condensed in a gallery space. It all seemed to fill the studio up, but it seems so much smaller in the huge cavern of the museum.
the studio needed a good cleaning after the wall was hung...
Jane and I give Joel a hand with his wall.
Here is a picture or Rachel Constantine with me and my winning painting in the Susan Macdowell Eakins painting competition, rachel was the judge for the show and you can see Alina with her second place painting below. 
This is the last painting I did of the semester and its a abstract piece done for Mike Gallagher's class incorporating a few of the assignments into one. I will be straight, I am not a big fan of most abstract art. The paintings I like by Diebenkorn are the ones that look more like Edward Hopper--the later for more abstract ones really leave me cold for the most part. I am not a fan of big color field paintings or splotches of running paint. That type of work doesn't sustain me, hold me. I find most 'modern art" depressing and boring or stunts, but I tried to put that aside and do something honest in this vein. It's much harder for me as I have nothing familiar to use a a judgement or guide. In figurative work I have many things I can see, things I know that I can use to judge and guide the work by. In abstract work like this--not so much. There are happy accidents along the process just like in figurative painting but there is more of an internal judgement as opposed to a external factor like observation of a figure or landscape to react to. Its in rustoleum on cardboard keeping with the theme so far in class this semester. The heaviness of the paint which was caked on very heavy in multiple layers cause it to actually start to slide around and I went with it. In the final crit people seemed to react to it well. I was honest and I worked on it hard but somehow I still feel this type of thing is a cheat, i just can't believe in it in the way I do as a figurative artist.
I grew the most as a painter this semester and that was the best thing-- my critics all seemed to agree here and the year is ending on a high note here, but I can't wait to get back into the studio this summer and get back to painting every day.
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