Friday, October 19, 2012

Who are your ancestors in art?

Lately I have been having some great conversations in the grad painting studio... YEAH!... amazing right?  New fresh air has blown into the dept. .... and it feels goooood!

I was asked by my committee head.....who my antecedents (great new word I just learned, excited about that ...ha! ) in painting are?   Though I thought I always new where I fit.... this conversation led me to research this topic in a way that I could relate to.  Family.  Who is my uncle in the painting world?  who is my aunt... etc. etc.  So I have begun to build a family tree of my ancestors in art and I don't feel that it will be limited to just painters.

While researching, I  found a stronger personal voice that speaks to who I am NOT as a painter.  I unequivocally am not a "non- objective" painter.  So if I am described as such....we will have a debate...be prepared!

Otherwise, I  am in the hunt for those that came before me and what their story was that they had to tell.  

Their truth.

My truth is unfolding as we speak.

".....the world in on fire, Have a nice day!"


Thursday, September 27, 2012

Since committee meeting are upon us....Saw this hanging on a professors door and thought I'd share....

Critique:

Eleven constructs of good work:


1.  Dynamism-Work that is visually arresting and causes delight.

2.  Depth-Work that is not consumed in the first look but revels more upon further viewing.

3.  Contemporaneity-  Work that reveals something of "the now."

4.  Concept-Work that is driven by an idea and the unique expression of that idea.

5.  Engagement-  Work that exudes the intensity and commitment of the maker.

6.  Originality-  Work that contributes to the ongoing search for "the new."

7.  Personality-  Work that communicates something of the core of the maker.

8.  Soul-  Work that feels whole, complete and alive.

9.  Parallelism-  Work that fulfills the expectations set up by its compositional gesture and stylistic phrasing.

10.  Subversion-  Work that subverts the brief in an effort to explode beyond the banal.

11.  Craft-  Work that is well made.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012





                                          Michelle L. Ghisson, Untitled, Mixed Media-(Oil on
                                          Canvas,  Ceramic Pigment, Cold Wax Medium,
                                          Antique Thread, Charcoal Dust, Cheese-cloth.) 2012.

Poetry as Insurgent Art /Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am signaling you through the flames. The North Pole is not where it used to be, Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest.  Civilization self-destructs.  The goddess Nemesis is knocking at the door....

What are poets for in such an age?  What is the use of poetry?  If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of Apocalyptic times, even if this means sounding apocalyptic.  You have to decide if bird cries are cries of ecstasy or cries of despair, by which you will know if you are a tragic or a lyric poet.  Conceive of love beyond sex.  Be subversive, constantly questioning reality and the status quo.  Strive to change the world in such a way that there's no further need to be a dissident.  Read between the lives, and write between the lines.  Be committed to something outside yourself.  Be passionate about it.  But don't destroy the world, unless you have something better to replace it.

If you would snatch fame from the flames, where is your burning bow, where are your arrows of desire, where is your wit on fire?

The master class starts wars.  The lower classes fight it.  Governments lie.  The voice of the government is often not the voice of the people.

Speak up, act out!  Silence is complicity.  Be the gadfly of the state and also its firefly.  And if you have two loaves of bread, do as the Greeks did:  sell one with the coin of the realm, and with the coin of the realm buy sunflowers. 

Wake up!  The world's on fire!

Have a nice day!

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

The Truth

Wassily Kandinsky:  Concerning the Spiritual in Art.

There is, however, in art another kind of external similarity which is founded on the fundamental truth.  When there is a similarity of inner tendency in the whole moral and spiritual atmosphere, a similarity of ideals, at first closely pursued but later lost to sight, a similarity in the inner feeling of any one period to that of another, the logical result will be a revival of the external forms which served to express those inner feelings in an earlier age.  An example of this today is our sympathy, our spiritual relationship, with the Primitives.  Like ourselves, these artist sought to express in their work only internal truths, renouncing in consequence all consideration of external form. 

These two possible resemblances between the art forms of today and those of the past will be at once recognized as diametrically opposed to one another.  The first, being purely external has no future.  The second, being internal, contains the seed of the future within itself.  After the period of materialist effort, which held the soul in check until it was shaken off as evil, the soul is emerging, purged by trials and sufferings.  Shapeless emotions such as fear, joy, grief, etc., which belonged to this time of effort, will no longer greatly attract the artist.  He will endeavour to awake subtler emotions, as yet unnamed.  Living himself a complicated and comparatively subtle life, his work will give to those observers capable of feeling them lofty emotions beyond the reach of words.