Day 4

      I had a last minute assignment to do before my final critique for Paintings Major class today. It had to be sent before class and in an email. I wrote it yesterday night but the editing is taking place today, so, as there are no rules for this fundraiser for the American Cancer Society, technically, this still counts as writing. So here goes.

Question One was find contemporary artists who are similar to me in form and content.
      What are my forms and content and who are the contemporary artists I should be looking at? What does this mean to me. Alphonso Dunn has amazing techniques using line drawing with a crow quill pen and ink. I love how he draws his flexed hands and feet, the curvature and shadowing he can get on his skulls, and his use of colors on his tree frogs.
      Rick Shaefer works beautifully (and LARGE) with pen and ink. He draws gorgeous landscapes, cityscapes, and animals, all exquisitely rendered.
     Ed Fairburn creates portrait drawings with pen and ink using pointilism. His surfaces are topographical maps where he pulls facial features from what he sees within the map key, using lines representing rivers, mountain ranges, and roads.
     Olivia Kemp doesn't even use a pencil to sketch out her ideas, she just starts right in with pen and ink. If she makes a mistake, she incorporates it into her design. She draws from imagination, creating worlds and cities that look as though they could be from anywhere, or from your favorite book. The details are amazing, it's like a puzzle, trying to find all the bits that make up her whole.
     Then there are the artists who paint to music. James McNeill Whistler who's paintings were made to Chopin's solo piano compositions or Paul Klee who enjoyed Bach's polyphonic choral works. Stuart Davis, Piet Mondrian, and Henri Matisse all enjoyed listening to jazz. Melissa McCracker, similar to Kandinsky, is a synethesia painter, seeing music in colors and shapes. I am not saying I am a synethesia painter, but I do believe my paintings gain some inspiration from the music I listen to.

Question Two was what is the formal element I used to install my thesis work? 

Although, most of what I found was for painting techniques,
I'm assuming the same reasons
can be for installation purposes as well.
Am I looking for order or
am I trying to rebel at 55.
The grid brings order to chaos,
it keeps information neat
and controlled.
Installing in a grid calms
the wrecklessness,
let's me see clearly,
when the artwork is not so calm.
Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture,
Chuck Close's grids,
to help him with his Prosopagnosia.
Betty Tompkins's allowing the grid
to stay visible.
Michelle Grabner created her own grid.
A working mother,
she used grids to stop and start,
to stay on track when she couldn't sit
for one whole sitting.
Agnes Martin's grids
comparing nature to grids,
representing ideas she saw,
like trees to innocence.
Grids can be quiet or bold
meditative or vibrant.
Grids can be a vehicle
for movement or color.
Pat Lipsky painted mosaics,
sometimes in color
sometimes in black and white.
The grid can be a palette,
freeze it.
The grid can help with drawing
architecture and
shadows and
people and
animals and
buildings or Frank Stella's shapes.
Grids are organization,
a direction to follow,
to stay within the lines
​........or to not.