Art's Explorer #3: Fine Art Critique

For myself, I have never been someone to fully understand art or be able to critique it with a great, detailed analysis. To be honest, I don’t really know what a lot of art is trying to say and the message that the artist is trying to display to the audience, whether it be a drawing, painting, sculpture or photograph. And I guess no audience will really know the real meaning to art but everyone does, however, have their own thoughts and beliefs because of how everyone else perceives and views things around them in life.

For this fine art critique we visited the Art Gallery of Ontario and were told to pick out a piece of fine art that spoke and stood out to us as individuals. For this I had to dig deep and find my inner artist and choose a piece of art that stood out to me.

The piece of art that I have chosen to speak about is a painting called Pont Boieldieu in Rouen, Rainy Weather by Camille Pissarro in 1896.

I am not by any means an artist or artistic with paintings nor do I have that much knowledge about art. But I do, however, know what art stands out to me when I’m in a gallery and I know what paintings I like and don’t really like too much.

As I was walking into one of the rooms at the gallery, I stood still, scanned the room and there was the painting that I chose. It was actually the last painting that I saw. There are many aspects of art that come to mind when I saw this painting. I noticed the colours that were used, which to me allowed the painting to give off a soft and calm feeling. Also, the texture of the way in which the artist painted shows brush strokes that do not give off the soft and finished look but are raised and somewhere sloppy. But that somewhat sloppiness perhaps created the strong feelings of calm and relaxation. The colours also stood out and contributed to that relaxed feeling I felt when looking at this painting. There are some light colours and shades that I would think are used to create the texture and softness of the painting. Whereas, other colours such as the darker tones were perhaps used to allow the painting to boldly stand out to its viewer and those colours were used to tell the story of the painting.

When I look at this painting I immediately think of history and events that I have learned in history classes that I have taken in school. I feel like this piece of art has a story or it looks like it could have a story. Many aspects of this painting that lead me to think of historical times are the actual images within the painting, such as the bridge, the factory looking building in the background and the horse carriages transporting people throughout the town. This painting just has a really old fashioned look to it, which I absolutely love because I really do enjoy history and all that it has to tell us!

Even though I do not know for sure what this piece is telling us, I feel that it is a historical piece and most likely has a great story behind it that would astonish the world!

Art's Explorer #2: Instant Sculpture

Art Word of the Week: SHAPE

There probably could have been a number of words that could have been used in order to analyze and be used to describe the sculpture that I created but the best word for me was SHAPE. Shape is seen as “an appropriate criterion for critiquing two-dimensional art that has length and width” (Schirrmacher & Fox, 2009, p. 140).

There are also many characteristics that come with the element of shape but some of the ones that pertain to the sculpture that I created are TALL, nonproportional, hard, angular, and complex (Schirrmacher & Fox, 2009, p. 140).

There are many different elements that can be discussed and used when looking at and analyzing art. You can look at aspects such as, colour, lines, texture, shape, design, lighting, etc. But some of those aspects seem to stand out more than others when looking at certain pieces of art.

Building a sculpture of any kind and out of any materials you can think of is quite a challenge. it is a very open-ended task and really it can go any way that you choose. I must say though, that sculpture activity that we completed in class on Tuesday was helped as I was exposed to my classmates’ creative expression along with whatever I had to offer to the table also. We all worked well together and created quite an interesting sculpture, or should I say piece of art!

When talking and looking at sculptures, shape is an extremely important aspect to look at when analyzing art. As seen in the picture below, I have created a sculpture which is a tower BUT this tower is made out of a small portion of my DVD collection. Some of the characteristics that I named above definitely go hand in hand when looking at the sculpture that I have created. But shape to me, as the artist, seems like the most important aspect. When looking at the shape of this sculpture, I realize that it really does not make much sense of all. To be honest, in the beginning, I was trying to imitate the Eiffel Tower but the further into the tower I got the more I realized how difficult it would be to re-create that tower with my material. My tower is much taller than I thought it was going to be. It is definitely not symmetrical but not completely asymmetrical either. There are some points on the tower where it looks to be symmetrical but as you travel further up, it is clearly not. There are many parts on the tower that have many different angles and are turned opposite ways, which allows this tower to not be symmetrical, like many towers are.

 

When I stopped to think about how I was going to create this sculpture, I’m not going to lie, but I struggled – a lot. I was unsure of what kind of sculpture to create and I especially struggled on what kind of material to use to create this piece of art. I was sitting around my room, looking around to see what I had a lot of in order to create a sculpture. For some reason, in my mind, whatever I wanted to make was just going to be made out of one type of material. I did however use tape in some parts to help it stay standing and for it to get to the height that it did.

As everyone can clearly see, I have a large DVD collection at home and have realized that they are good for more than just one thing. They definitely came in handy when building this sculpture. With using not a very strong and stable type of material, I feel that my sculpture came out stronger and better looking than I anticipated. I guess you could tie it all in and say that my love for movies, which I would completely consider art, worked well with this sculpture. I made a piece of art – the sculpture – using art that I personally love, which is Hollywood film. Looks like I’ve made art out of art, I’m more creative than I thought I was!

Schirrmacher, R., & Fox, J. E. (2009). Art & Creative Development for Young Children. Clifton    Park, NY: Thomson Delmar Learning.

Art's Explorer #1: My Creative Inspiration

Create, Creative, Creativity …What does it all really mean?

Is there really any one way that creativity can be explained or defined? Is it an abstract thought? A painting or a photograph? A sketch, a drawing, a sculpture? Or how about a song or a dance? To me, being creative and art can be any one of those things just mentioned but being involved in the arts and considering someone to be creative can mean many different things to a lot of different people.

I have always thought of the arts and being creative to consist of three specific categories which are music, dance and art, such as painting, drawing, sculpting, photography, etc. Throughout the years I have to some extent tried to dabble in different categories such as music when I was in a few choirs in school and also dance when I was enrolled in a jazz dance class at age 6 and in high school I took dance class and was on the dance team. But besides those few moments in my life, I never really considered myself to be a creative person at all. However, in my life, I have a few close friends who are artistic and creative and one person in my family. I have always wanted to be a creative person but could never bring myself to release any creativity inside me.  

When thinking about my life and trying to find something to discuss that involves the arts and being creative, I sit here struggling as I do not see myself as a highly creative and/or artistic person. The one person I know who absolutely loves art and is wonderfully talented is my younger sister. I’m almost positive that she got majority of the artistic and creative ability in the family and I got very little. My sister mostly does paintings and pencil drawings. She started to display this talent at the young age of about 8 or 9 years old and from that time onward, her talent has grown so much over the years and I have had the chance to see her branch off and become so confident with her art.

My sister’s art, believe it or not, has definitely had an effect on me. She has definitely inspired me and helped me along the way as much as she possibly could, without losing her patience! My sister’s art is definitely something that has become of great importance to me. She has painted and drawn pictures for myself as gifts, which I display proudly around my room. And of course as I see her with all her talent, there have been times when I have tried to attempt to draw and paint something. But of course have not been successful. There was this one time, a few years ago, when I was sitting with my sister while she was painting and asked if I could join her. She gave me a mini canvas and a picture of a simple, not detailed teddy bear holding a balloon. I’ll never forget but over the span of about 20 minutes I tried and tried to copy the look of the bear and after that time passed my sister looked at my canvas to see what I had drawn…and I had only drawn the top of the head and two ears! She laughed as did I and quickly realized drawing AND painting was not something I was meant to do. I think I’ll stick to dance… =)

I do not think I will ever be able to grasp the artistic ability and talent that my sister holds with her, but I can definitely continue to support her love for art and enjoy the art she creates! With her permission, here are some pieces of art she has created over the years…