Modern Art. The day began with a viewing of the Rick Amor's exhibition.
The special part was that we were lucky enough- (the 17 art teachers as well as myself) to have the artist himself- Rick Amor walk us through his exhibition. It follows Ricks' progression from being an student at art school in the 60's all the way to today. It was an awesome collection. He was very giving in information and always willing to answer candidly about his life and work as a professional artist....
One point of interest was that he had John Brack at a lecturer at art school- How wonderful would that have been?? I just love John Brack- Collins Street, 5pm (1955) is one of my favourite Australian paintings ever.
I can't wait till the retrospective comes to the NGV federation next year. That will be an exceptional exhibition!!! You can see the John Brack influence in Ricks' work....it is so there and even he admits it! Rick said that the first half of his artistic life his pictures are about art and the second half are now about ones self...
A few quotes by Rick talking about his work that particularly I found interesting:I can't wait till the retrospective comes to the NGV federation next year. That will be an exceptional exhibition!!! You can see the John Brack influence in Ricks' work....it is so there and even he admits it! Rick said that the first half of his artistic life his pictures are about art and the second half are now about ones self...-"Pictures should take you somewhere."
-"You don't want to say too much."
-"Pictures/ paintings should be the beginning, not the end of something."
-"You can paint a whole picture using black, white and burnt sienna."
I suppose I am in trouble then because I love RED!!! Oh no, does that mean I am doomed???
After the Rick Amor viewing we had a very art teacher orientated theory lesson, using Ricks work as an example called 'Theory: A dialogue with art'. It certainly helped clear up VELS for me- in the arts!-After a yummy lunch we began a practical activity again using Rick Amor's working methods. We each worked on an oil painting. I must admit that oil painting and myself are relatively uncharted waters. I am the first to admit that I have a very limited knowledge of oil painting... so it was quite an eye opening experience. I do think though working on an oil painting in a few short hours is really a very hard activity to grasp. I mean we had to mix up a variety of colours using a very limited palette. Use a terrible coloured photocopy to reappropriate one of Rick Amor's paintings- the Catman..... Though I did learn what a meticulous artist Rick is. He rules up each canvas to create the Golden Mean...... it was amazing to learn and also rule up my own canvas that way. Showing us that each oil painting follows the perfect proportions and is lined up in the direct line of each section. The ancient Greeks knew of a rectangle whose sides are in the golden proportion (1 : 1.618 which is the same as 0.618 : 1). Never knew I was the maths type!! I must say my oil painting was a shambles but I did enjoy it and I did learn... A great web site on Fibonacci Numbers and the golden mean is the Fibonacci Numbers and The Golden Section in Art, Architecture and Music. A wonderful site to explore the masters use of the divine proportions... Here are a fe
w pics of the oil paintings in working
progress..
w pics of the oil paintings in working
progress.. You can see my start on the left, another wonderful teacher on the right..... God the golden mean is doing my head in! With the coloured photocopy we worked from on the bottom left.
Overall a wonderful day, but I still have to finish with a little RED..... Yes Sybil Fawlty was what I felt like after trying to rule up the golden mean and try to work out the Fibonacci numbers... Aghhhhhhhhh!
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