10 years ago.
While in the midst of some spring closet cleaning, I recently ran across my painting portfolio from my very last class at MSU-Billings (I needed a few more upper division credits for graduation so, of course, I went for the art credits ;). This was just about exactly 10 years ago--a six-week summer course of 3-4 hours of painting Monday-Thursday, which was the perfect way to spend my last summer at home. I can be pretty hard on myself sometimes when my vision extends so far beyond my abilities. But looking at these old paintings of mine reminds me that even though I'm not where I want to be, I have come a long way.
And because I believe that you (whoever might be reading this) probably enjoy a good laugh as much as I do, I'm going to share some of these characters with you:
My professor really liked this one. I remember him telling me that many of the MFA students he had taught wouldn't have been able to do this. Which cracked me up a little because I'd been to a couple nice museums by this point (in fact, I'd just returned from a trip to Italy!), and I was well aware that this wasn't anything special ;)
I cringe when I look at this stuff, but I'm grateful for the time I spent in this class. Neil was a kind and nurturing teacher, and he really tried to teach us color theory--what he called the "impressionist palette." We painted sphere after sphere after sphere in different color schemes, which I'm sure was really good for me, even though it was somewhat tedious and boring. It was actually just really refreshing that he was teaching us something. The other painting classes (excepting the watercolor classes) I had taken were just sort of an unstructured "paint what you feel" sort of thing. You know, like, "Oh, it's really intriguing how you made the eye twice its intended size" kind of deal (as if it had been intentional and deeply meaningful, ha).
Here is but a small sampling of those spheres :P
Neil brought in black and white photocopies of some different portraits and things, and had us mod podge them onto canvas and paint over them in different color schemes.
Ha, if you want to see them bigger (I don't ;), just click on them.
At the end of the semester, Neil wrote me this unbelievably sweet note:
And because I believe that you (whoever might be reading this) probably enjoy a good laugh as much as I do, I'm going to share some of these characters with you:
My professor really liked this one. I remember him telling me that many of the MFA students he had taught wouldn't have been able to do this. Which cracked me up a little because I'd been to a couple nice museums by this point (in fact, I'd just returned from a trip to Italy!), and I was well aware that this wasn't anything special ;)
I cringe when I look at this stuff, but I'm grateful for the time I spent in this class. Neil was a kind and nurturing teacher, and he really tried to teach us color theory--what he called the "impressionist palette." We painted sphere after sphere after sphere in different color schemes, which I'm sure was really good for me, even though it was somewhat tedious and boring. It was actually just really refreshing that he was teaching us something. The other painting classes (excepting the watercolor classes) I had taken were just sort of an unstructured "paint what you feel" sort of thing. You know, like, "Oh, it's really intriguing how you made the eye twice its intended size" kind of deal (as if it had been intentional and deeply meaningful, ha).
Here is but a small sampling of those spheres :P
Neil brought in black and white photocopies of some different portraits and things, and had us mod podge them onto canvas and paint over them in different color schemes.
Ha, if you want to see them bigger (I don't ;), just click on them.
At the end of the semester, Neil wrote me this unbelievably sweet note:
I also remember him saying something along the lines of, "You're going to go off and do what you need to do for a while. But in 5 or 10 years, I think you'll come back to this. And when you do, stop by and borrow some gesso."
Well, I'm back. And isn't it strange when someone can see something in you that you can't quite see in yourself (yet)? Thanks, Neil, wherever you are. Wish I were close enough to take you up on that gesso :)
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