Learning to Unlearn what you have Learned

Art done by Bea Victoria Cameron, in class, charcoal on paper

Art done by Bea Victoria Cameron, in class, charcoal on paper

Today's class rendered magnificent results. I am profoundly inspired by my students who have tapped into their untampered artist voice and, in the process, making us students of one another. Today's summation gives me hope that any conditioning done on one's psyche can be undone or re-corrected, and that, together we may continue to aid each other in our pursuit of those realizations.

The goal today was to eliminate any preconceptions one may have had of oneself, to rid oneself of any ideals of how art should be made or how art has been made, and to not be conscious of one's byproduct during the act of doing. The idea that any past-conditioning done on one's psyche, whether it be factors of environment or impositions of an institution or society or culture, can now be undone by-way-of simply becoming aware.

Having said, we must now continue and find the inlet (or gateway) where art can be experienced and made from a more revelatory place.

"Do not take stock in public opinion–for these waters, yet traveled, are void of such." 
-The Speaker  

Take a moment to consider that one must first rid oneself of anxiety and expectations entirely. Do away with filters, with critic and with any acknowledgment of a prior foundation. These things were never yours to begin with and they are no longer of any service to you. They were conditions and definitions imposed on you without your realizing, through schools and societal learning–such a convincing argument they've made, at that. Be prepared to lose any stock of which you no longer have use.
Furthermore, expel the idea of right and wrong, good or bad or any other sects, for that matter. Become aware of any constructs that may have been imposed on us through conditions of environment and upbringing. Know them. Become fully aware of them. Question them. Expunge them. Because, one cannot rid oneself of superficial means if one has not honestly identified and become fully aware of those means which are superficial.

This superficial state was never your own. You are not superficial, you never were. You were taught such a thing. And, you'd better believe that an influence such as this has its own intentions. It was subtly implanted in you at a time when you were most impressionable and you were not sufficiently equipped with the knowledge, experience and tools necessary to effectively reason. So now, use your own line of questioning, become your own speaker and use your own critical thinking to rebuild all that you had previously thought was true about art (or life in general). Create from scratch a foundation that is all your own. Because, this is what reality truly is. Reality is "your reality" based on your own reasoning and based on your own constructs, no one else's.

Become aware of any conditioning done and how it may have impacted one's self-expression. By becoming aware of one's own conditioning one then begins to develop a philosophical foundation built (or is building) on internal self-examination and self-questioning. This foundation is evolves from a natural law and not laws or norms that are man-made. You'll see that in this realm there is no right or wrong. There is only you. There are only your answers to your own questions. There is only your way of doing, in the same sense, it can only be done by you. But to get there, one must dispel the paradigms of right and wrong and good or bad.

The funny thing about becoming proficient in art, is that what is needed to do it has always been there to begin with.  It is up to you to find it again. No one can teach you your art and no one can teach you about doing your hard work of realizing self. All the speaker can do is help you become more aware, to help you undo what has been done and to help show you the state of mind used in achieving it.

Still life study, THE JUICER

Structural planes

As a painter, it's important to see objects as being constructed with flat planes, or structural planes. Often, as a student, its a common bad habit to thoughtlessly blend your strokes over and over again. This exercise will help you see the overall structural mass of an object and help you to not over-blend when building an object. It will dictate the direction of your brushstrokes, help you simplify values without blending, realize the source/direction of the light source and help you understand the object as it appears in perspective. In this exercise, I observed an apple and imagined how it would look being constructed entirely of flat planes. To help me do this, I envisioned what it would be like to sculpt this apple out of a block of clay using a knife. By being forced to make edgy deliberate strokes with a flat brush and not allowing myself to blend (especially a round object such as this apple), I could better make thoughtful shapes that had purpose. Now, imagine what it would be like to apply these principles to a face or head.

Understanding how tone affects color

This is a valuable exercise that uses only gray with a given color. It is interesting to see how gray (Titanium white and Ivory black) affects color. A variety of tones are created depending on how much black vs. how much white is in the gray mixture. I recommend doing these tone charts with all colors on your palette (primary and secondary colors).  I also recommend doing these charts again with using brown instead of black. Also, note how cadmium yellow is light in nature and appears higher up on the value scale. By the same token, Cadmium red is intrinsically a darker color and appears lower on the value scale. Be sensitive to the innate lightness or darkness of a color that comes directly out of the tube. Because of this, cadmium yellow can sometimes be used to lighten a color–just as, Ultramarine can be used to darken a color. Helpful Tip: try printing-out (in black and white) any color, stripping it of its color information to see where exactly it would fall on the value chart. 

Class demo

This portrait demonstration of a live model utilizes the two principles: building an object seeing structural planes and using tone with color.

Artist quote of the week.

"A sandwich is not much a sandwich at all if it doesn't include but all the basic food groups, and art." -Titus

Be the genius you are now.

Titus Castanza fishing, photo by Alec Laughlin

Art making is a lifelong commitment. The motivations behind the artist are realized over time and there's simply no replacing it. The artist becomes more evolved even if it means becoming less realistic.

An artist may become disappointed to discover that they are not the kind of artist he/she had originally set out to be. If the journey is to have any amount of sincerity or originality, then the artist's voice from within reveals itself to the artist, not the other way around. For the most part, the author is born with his/her unique smell. The error in an artist's way is when he/she attempts to emulate current standards or trends to any certain degree of esthetic which aren't entirely their own. A certain esthetic or affect is often adopted by the author, masking his/her own originality and resulting in insincere results.

Art should be conceived without ulterior influence, to the utmost extent possible. An artist only needs to exude their own natural given smell and to not mask it by splashing on cologne, so to speak. Simply put, all we have to do is just be ourselves, as hard as that may sometimes be.

Cezanne realized the importance of keeping his artist core intact from a young age. He believed that the influences of school and gallery shows were to be avoided. He made his art unto himself, allowing it to evolve in its own kind of personal vacuum with as few distractions as possible, so that it could evolve unhampered over his lifetime. He was a provincial man who chose the seclusion of the countryside over the bustling opportunities of the city–he rejected criticism and fame.

Paul Cezanne, self portrait

"An art which isn't based on feeling isn't an art at all... feeling is the principle, the beginning and the end; craft, objective, technique - all these are in the middle." -Paul Cezanne 

Another motivation realized may be that becoming more technically proficient in rendering realistically may not be nearly as important as the artist had once thought. It's only but one tool in an artist's arsenal. An artist may realize that idea is more important–to develop a philosophy on how art and life is to be expressed. Idea becomes the trumping force, away from the technical. Expert levels of technical skill may be obtained and used, but only if to strengthen the artist's argument or to help give idea greater impact. Thus, the amount of technical skill needed is subject to idea.

Picasso for instance, a brilliant draftsman who figured out his path and became famous for it, but it wasn't for his technical proficiency–quite the opposite. The impact of his ideas for the non-literal far trumped his ability to render realistically. It was as if he had unlocked his child genius and left realism behind. This is probably why he is quoted as saying,

Left is a painting done by Picasso later in his career. Right is a drawing done much earlier in his career as a student of academia. They show how Picasso departed from realism for something more expressive. A brilliant draftsman he was in both examples.

"All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. " 

"It takes a long time to become young." -Pablo Picasso

It was ultimately their personal expression which took them further. I wonder how much longer I must toil before my artist self is fully realized. Will I be 50, 70 or 90... or dead?

-Titus