Studio Journal Entry #7

HIHI.

SO, had a critique in painting this week and got a lot of good artists to start researching.  HERE THEY IS:

Tom McGrath

Turner

Keith Mayerson

Dana Shutz

Tomory Dodge

Dirk Screber

Richard Misrock

Edward Bertinsky

Jimmy Leslie

and.. Japanese Woodcuts

Tomory Dodge

I really like how ambiguous this painting is while still being descriptive.  I've been dealing with light a lot in my paintings and I think it is used intelligently and subtly in this particular piece.  Dodge keeps his brush strokes very gestural, but still creates a contained, sensible landscape.    

Keith Mayerson

Like with the Dodge piece, I was initially drawn to this painting because of the way Mayerson handles the light.  Everyone can relate to experiencing a fuzzy, out of focus nocturnal city scape.  The way in which Mayerson handles the light in this painting is like nothing I have ever seen before.  He is using the same traditional landscape format that I have been using.  This is proof that you can still be traditional and interesting at the same time.  There is something that I find unsettling about this painting, however.  The color choice and ambiguous flashes of light in the sky give me an uneasy feeling.  Everything appears to have a yellow tint.  Perhaps that is where the unsettling feeling is stemming from.  This reminds me very much of my boat painting.  I appreciate the manner in which Mayerson suggests forms and shapes in this painting without being too exact.

I read an interview with Dana Shutz with Peter Halley today.  I really appreciated how informal and personal it kind of was.  Dana Shutz seems like a hip chick.  Here's the link: http://www.indexmagazine.com/interviews/dana_schutz.shtml

I really like how Shutz says she got the idea for her paintings of the "self-cannibalizing" people from her own doodles.  Sometimes artists don't need definitive, meaningful areas in which they gather material from which to paint.  Sometimes we just paint something because we want to and not for some deeper meaning.  Sometimes the question "why" really irks me.  ARGGG

GOALS:

PAINT.