Before laying down any paint at all, I built up a simple textural layer with cheese-cloth, a technique I learned from the work of Verna Brady. Verna is my boyfriend's grandmother, but she was also an incredible post-50's abstract expressionist. She experimented mostly with 3-dimentional texture in painting, and also expressive visual ideas in abstract forms, such as relative size and shape relationships.
Here's Verna Brady:
And here's an example of her work:
And here's her working in her studio in the 70's:
Anyway, she's been a huge inspiration in my outlook on art in the last few years, but I haven't really figured out how to use the things I learned from her work until recently. It's hard to let go of strict representation and realism, I've found that it takes years and years or realistic representational work before you can break away from it-- or not before you can break away, but until you can feel comfortable with breaking away. It's so hard to let go, partially because it feels easier to stick to things you already know, but also because it's difficult to be objective about something as subjective as abstract art.
No comments:
Post a Comment