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George Rhys Artist

In Pursuit of the Unselfconsciously Profound

12/31/2017

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Not so long ago there were a good number of paintings I had been talking myself out of making. Why? Not sure, but it may be because at some level I had bought into the notion that I must not do what I want to do. Anyway, there are still several such paintings in limbo.
Picture
Lunch Break, Acrylic 18 x 24
Because as a young man I had more than twice allowed myself to be persuaded by self-appointed superior artists to completely change my direction, and even now still find myself susceptible to the least comment, positive or negative, I  found it helpful to work in seclusion. This made it really easy to work on anything, because nobody was ever going to see it—not for a while, anyway. 

I credit Roberta Murray with setting me off in this direction by posing the question, "How would I paint if nobody was going to see my work?" 

The new strategy worked well. I found it much easier to start paintings and to work them in a manner which would have been unfathomable in the past. It was not a perfect solution; I did still have to encourage myself in order to get started, but I managed to execute a handful of paintings that turned out to have higher meaning for me. My excitement in painting those harked back to the old days when painting was new and not yet fraught with the threat of put-downs.

Often enough my paintings reached a level above any I had attained before. The difference between these works and those previous is not earth-shattering at all; it may be barely visible to most people. To me the evolution was profound.
And yet still a negative voice inside me suggested, “These aren’t so great. They are not groundbreaking at all. You could see work of this stature in a magazine illustration.”
That may be true, I admit, and there have been some pretty good magazine illustrations. But so what? I was improving. And you could say of a heck of a lot of good paintings that they would make good magazine illustrations.

Sometimes some of my own paintings intimidated me. At those moments I had no better ideas in the pipeline. Fearing that I would not reach that level again for a while (though I did believe I would eventually) made it almost impossible to start a new painting. And if a painter or critic said to me, “Just do it anyway,” I didn’t need to hear that.

​I do not accept much of the nonsense spouted these days about how people should paint—but that’s for another blog entry.

It took a long time and a great deal of self-persuasion to undertake each next painting. I was sort of happy when I managed to do so, and new paintings were finished and sitting for my personal viewing in the studio. Sort of happy because, no, this was not the romantic ending (and I knew it would not be) of the 
Picture
Illuminati, Acrylic 24 x 18
painter discovering that his new undertaking was outrageously successful, despite his pessimism. I believed of each painting that it was not my very best, and it usually wasn't. Though among my best, it did not yet have the conception or meaning to which I aspired. But okay.

​In one very important respect, however, each painting was a great success, because I did it. I overpowered my negative concerns and decided to paint it just to see what each one would look like.  That made the next one easier to take up.
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​Taxonomic* Adventures in Learning

12/17/2017

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Picture
The Bath House; acrylic 12 x 16.
I have decided not to continue my series of articles on color.

I spent twenty-five years teaching mathematics to a wide spectrum of ages and abilities, gave my heart and guts to it, and lived with the awareness that I was the oddball for seeing the beauty in it. A significant ratio of students resists learning about an analytic subject—hell, many students resist learning anything at all—and there is nothing inside me that desires to push anyone into such a pursuit.

When people find out I worked as a teacher and ask what subject, I reflexively wince inside when I tell them it was math because the common response to that is how they hated math and how it was their worst subject. Some of that hatred, you know, leaks onto the teacher.

So maybe I am a little phobic about getting myself into a reminiscent situation. The next bit in the color discussion is quite analytical and a lot of work for me.

Recently I carelessly blurted out in company, when asked, that I knew enough about perspective to volunteer a workshop (though I don’t really want to). The second person to respond made her negative feelings about such a study very plain. And there was no third response. I had long ago abandoned any intention of continuing discussing color; that exchange regarding perspective is what has motivated me to write this little posting.

But before I go I just want to say this: there is no synthesis without analysis.

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*Bloom’s cognitive domain (knowledge-based) adapted from Wikipedia:

Remembering involves recognizing or remembering facts, terms, basic concepts, or answers without necessarily understanding what they mean. Its characteristics may include:
·         Knowledge of specifics—terminology, specific facts
·      Knowledge of ways and means of dealing with specifics—conventions, trends and sequences, classifications and categories, criteria, methodology
·         Knowledge of the universals and abstractions in a field—principles and generalizations, theories and structures
Example: Name five types of composition.

Comprehending 
involves demonstrating understanding of facts and ideas by organizing, comparing, translating, interpreting, giving descriptions, and stating the main ideas.
Example: Identify the type of composition Da Vinci utilizes in Madonna of the Rocks. How does this composition contribute to the meaning of this work?

Applying
 involves using acquired knowledge—solving problems in new situations by applying acquired knowledge, facts, techniques and rules. Learners should be able to use prior knowledge to solve problems, identify connections and relationships and how they apply in new situations.
Example: Sketch a diagram of a street scene using a composition that implies activity.

Analyzing
 involves examining and breaking information into component parts, determining how the parts relate to one another, identifying motives or causes, making inferences, and finding evidence to support generalizations. Its characteristics include:
·         Analysis of elements
·         Analysis of relationships
·         Analysis of organization
Example: Carefully analyze the compositional elements of Seurat’s La Grande Jatte, making specific reference to objects depicted in the painting to support your claims. 

Synthesizing
 involves building a structure or pattern from diverse elements; it also refers to the act of putting parts together to form a whole. Its characteristics include:
·         Production of a unique communication
·         Production of a plan, or proposed set of operations
·         Derivation of a set of abstract relations
Example: Create a painting whose composition combines three or more complicated shapes and that implies the quiet before the storm.

Evaluating
 involves presenting and defending opinions by making judgments about information, the validity of ideas, or quality of work based on a set of criteria. Its characteristics include:
·         Judgments in terms of internal evidence
·         Judgments in terms of external criteria
Example: Look back over your paintings from the last three months. Which are the most engaging by virtue of their compositions? Why?
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    Verbiage

    Sometimes you just have to talk about ideas. Well, I do anyway.

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