Blog

Greetings from Haliburton School of the Arts at Fleming College in Haliburton!

I am here for the next two weeks doing nothing but thinking art, hearing art, seeing art, dreaming art and creating art! This week I am painting in John Leonard's Individual Studies studio. Next week, it's Otis Tamasauskas Printmaking Fusion course. Very excited.

From yesterday, the first day's painting still being tweeked is below. No title as yet but it is a view from the top of the hill in the country.

Today, Tuesday, two artists gave their presentations and we reviewed art from the Canadian abstractionist artists. This took some time so I've only got the underpaintings ready for the next two paintings.

Did manage to complete the exercise given for the week. This is hanging in the Paper Chase show in the hall at the College. The exercise was to create a structure of shapes, group the shapes into 3 or 4 areas of different value(light or dark or mid light, mid dark etc). Within a value area, use complementary colours (the values of both colours would need to keep matching those of the area) All areas except one needed to be visually active. This means that the area needs to look or feel textured . Doesn't need to be a good painting-- just needed to solve the problems given. I used a composition that you may recognize from the gallery. Seemed easier than making a new one :D The red originates in the Indian Paintbrush that grows in this meadow in front of the magnificent Mount Robson in our Canadian Rockies.

You'll notice that when you squint your eyes nearly closed(the colour disappears and you just see darks and lights), the red and green (paper towel and textured paint collaged pieces) complements are the same value and closely match the glued on gritty sand on the mountain. The light area includes violet with bumpy yellow complementary dots. The sun is lumpy paint. The midlight value, low intensity 'road' in the lower left of is also textured paint.