Sadly, I was unable to attend the talk in person, but I enjoyed getting to watch the Facebook live stream. I thought this Lunchtime Lecture was very interesting, Sasha Waters Freyer is the Department Chair of Photo/Film at VCU as well as an independent film maker. She originally studied photo and film and makes documentaries as well as experimental films. Her recent documentary, "Gary Winogrand: All Things are Photographable," will air soon on PBS n the American Master's series. Her other passion in photo/film is what she calls "experimental films." In these she often draws upon archival footage, sometimes even reshooting the original film shot by shot, as well as filming herself things she finds interesting on 16 mm film. By doing this, she creates an artistic film which she compares to poetry, building the film shot by shot similar to poetry being built word by word.
I found this talk to be very interesting. I enjoyed hearing about her processes and her career as a filmmaker. When I was younger, I always was interested in filmmaking even taking a class in Super8 film, which reminded me of the 16mm film she used in her experimental pieces. So to see someone doing film successfully as a career is inspiring. More abstract, non narrative films seem like something I would not enjoy but I found her experimental films to be quite intriguing, I think the audio she added post-production adds an interesting element. I don't think I'd seen any experimental films before so this was a completely new idea. I don't think I would personally do this, but I would like to learn more and try it out. She also talked about the extremely long process of making a film which definitely makes me appreciate them more. Her message about pursuing your true interests I think is important to hear and I definitely am trying to figure that out although I'm quite conflicted at the moment. Her experience at the MacDowell Artists Colony sounds really cool and like a great way to have time to explore and focus on your art away from distractions. I would love to try something like that in the future. Overall, I enjoyed her talk a lot and it definitely inspired me to think about trying new media and possibly experimenting with film. Here are some links to her websites/more info: And here is one of her experimental films, Respiration:
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So I took one more day to attempt to "finish" the piece. It was definitely difficult to decide what would make it finished. I focused on creating blended colors which you can see in the purple blue sections, as well as added more white sort of blocked out areas to balance out the white in the middle. Using a palette knife and brush I did .a few additional strokes of paint in purple. Finally, I also added another layer with more colors to dilute the bright white in the middle. I definitely think it has more of a finished quality. I wouldn't say its my favorite painting, but I'm overall ok with how it turned out although it was very different than what I expected. I definitely decided that I prefer working with brushes and not using drip or staining processes. I tried to get some texture but it was relatively minimal and more about the gestural strokes. I think if I were to redo a layer or change it, it would have to be the yellow marks. I think the color is just very basic and flat and has a lot less dimension than the rest of the piece. In the same line of thinking, at the end I really started to blend colors and use that to color in shapes, but I think I should have been doing that the entire time. This being my first painting on a somewhat substantially sized canvas, I'm happy with it. I definitely learned a lot through this process, and got to try a lot through experimentation. I think I would be interested in doing another one given what I've learned and if I put less pressure on myself knowing I've already completed a full one, especially experimenting with another color palette. I also have been influenced and inspired by the works of my classmates and want to see how a bit more texture would change my work. I don't think I'm a fan of huge texture, but a bit more subtle changes on the surface could add to the expression factor. Below this I will create a slideshow to show the complete evolution of my painting.
The first step I took on this day was adding another charcoal layer. I had liked it and how the paints had layered over it in the past layers so I decided to add more. I had a little more difficulty getting flowy marks that were solid lines with line quality, which is why theres a couple lines with multiple marks. I think there also was a bit more hesitancy and rush as this was the last class day to work on it and I was not sure how to make it a finished work. I knew I wanted to use white next but I wanted to do something other than more gestural strokes because my goal wasn't an all-over composition I wanted something to draw the eye and create something more specific than that. My teacher suggested again filling in shapes, but that became increasingly difficult for me. Because of how I had covered my favorite aspects of the painting in the past, I was really scared to block off areas like he was suggesting, as I didn't want to cover up all of the layers I had created even though that is sort of the point. Through the frustration, I added some white marks and filled in a shape in the center that I do think creates a good focal point. Later that day, I went back to add additional marks in a similar yellow to what I had started with. I don't completely dislike these marks but I tried to do multiple yellow tones and that is not completely visible which I think would have created more depth in the stroke. In addition I don't think the same amount of line quality is present that there was in the first few layers. I am not sure if this is the finished painting yet. I am content with it but I think it is missing a last piece that would truly make it "finished".
Feb. 11:So this day I made a lot of progress on my painting. I started by making large gestural strokes over most of the painting with two blue colors blended which created a really nice layer. This honestly may be my favorite part of the painting, I really like the effect that these two blues created. This also started the gestural flow that my painting follows after for the rest of the time. Next, I cautiously applied charcoal to the painting after experimenting with different types. I did not like this at first especially considering I had not followed the "don't get attached" advice. As soon as I added the next green layer though I started to see how the charcoal adds depth and deepens the layering effect. I hadn't expected the paint to mix with the charcoal but it actually created really cool effects. The green paint also is multi-toned like the past few steps. I definitely began to get frustrated especially when I covered over some of my favorite blue sections. Feb. 13So this is where it started to get complicated. I was attempting to follow the advice to "fill in shapes." Being a normally precise person I kept attempting to fill in specific shapes with this purple paint and then trying to blend it unsuccessfully to get a gradient, and it was not working. I definitely was not a fan of this step especially when doing it because it felt like I was restricting myself and I wasn't sure where the "shapes" were to fill in or overlap. After a while I did try to fan out and have more expressive edges even to the defined shapes. My main issue with this section was that I think I covered up some of my favorite parts where you could see through to the other layers and I was unhappy that they were now lost under the purple paint. The green blob in the middle was also throwing off the balance to me and that bothered me.
On February 6th, I started my painting. I definitely did not have a perfect plan going into this project. Through consulting with my teachers, I had an idea of the steps I would take, starting with layering thin layers of paint. This first day there was not too much time to start so I began by painting a full complete layer of two tones of yellow paint, achieved by adding some fluid pigment and blending the two together with a flat paintbrush. As it was just the first step, I couldn't rly judge it yet, I did like the effect of the two blended colors and I think it was a good basis for the rest of the painting.
Before starting our full size paintings, we did a set of practice paintings to experiment with the new media and processes we had just learned. This included zips, paint pours, using gel mediums, staining, and more. The first practice painting focused on learning zips. I started with a light greenish color and then put strips of tape and painted a dark blue layer and additional "drizzles" of white paint all over. Once this dried, I removed the tape leaving behind the green stripes. For the second painting, I did multiple layers of dark blue and purple paint and did gestural white marks in a semicircle in the right corner. I experimented with gel medium and brushstrokes in the bottom left section and then drips in white and yellow from the top. I think this helped me decide what type of piece I wanted to do for my final and gave me more insight into the processes. I currently do not have photos of my practice paintings but will add them ASAP. |
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June 2021
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