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Figure in oils workshopThis is the last workshop of 2008, and features everybody's favourite: Figure painting in oils.
From study to opus.
How is a picture crafted? How are the groups of figures conceived, integrated, and how is the setting established? The last fine artists died many years ago. Degas in 1917, Alma-Tadema in 1912, John Waterhouse in 1917, Toulouse Lautrec in 1901. These were not Impressionists. The Impressionists copied nature. Degas, Lautrec, Sargent, Klimt, Turner, Leighton assembled their compositions in their studios, based on studies drawn from life. Honesty in art is a complex issue. Copying a flower from nature is honest, copying one from another artist is not; nor is copying it from a photograph. The dishonesty lies in the pretense that the drawing or the painting was the product of the skill of the artist. Tracing and tinting a pre-existing image, painted or photographed, is fraud. The first thing that we demand of our artists is honesty. But honesty on its own is not enough to create great art. Simple art, maybe, or naive art, possibly. But great art requires more. Struggle is required. The work should be the product of the blood, the sweat, and the tears of the artist. Anything less is disrespectful. Passable art is disrespectful of the artists of the past, of humanity, and of nature, or of God, which is who we paint for. Even a beautifully rendered image of a face, or a flower, or sunrise, is a study. The great artists went further, and go further. Great pictures are conceived before nature, they mature and ripen in the mind of the artist, they find their form in countless sketches and and studies, and they are carved and drawn into the canvas or the clay, torn from the paper, hammered and beaten into shape; they are scraped and pulled and twisted and forged until they come into being like a great mountain range. They resemble a rainstorm or a volcano; they are the fossil of some great and profound experience. The canvas is a battleground, a nuptial bed, a ruined citadel. Degas seldom painted from the model, preferring to do pages of drawings of dancers, or of jockeys. He arranged these studies into complex systems, often using the same study in various arrangements, comparing the creation of a work of art to the commission of a crime. Waterhouse and Gericault and Sargent did multiple studies of every figure in their paintings, in pencil, in watercolour, and in oils. Behind every painting by a fine artist lie acres of paper, miles of lines. This is great art. A handful of artists work like this today. They struggle... they suffer... they fight the fight of the ages. It is not by their successes that we measure them, but by the ferocity of their struggle. And no struggle is truly heroic which does not end in defeat. This is the glory of tragedy.
The Artists' Gallery.Years ago in Observatory, a group of 7 artists set up their own gallery, in a kind of cooperative partnership. This model has always been my ideal, but we were forced to close it down when the other partners withdrew. |
In this issueWebsiteWorkshopsFor details on workshops and classes in Cape Town and Europe, click here ArchivePrevious newsletters from Ryno can be found here. Pass it onLet's widen our circle of friends. Forward up to five copies. If this letter has been forwarded to you, and you would like to continue receiving it, please enter your details below. |
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