On Saturday, I was able to attend a painting class with Jesse Reno. His style is intuitive, primitive, outsider with layers of painting and meaning. I've admired his work for years and when Nikki Blackwood organized a workshop with him, I jumped at the chance to take it. During last couple of weeks, I was wondering why I even was going - I am not painting anymore and with work and the baby, when would I have time to paint again? But it was worth it and I need to carve out some time to paint
All of the pictures will appear bigger if you click on them, that way you can see more detail.
A stack of his finished work:
Jesse paints a lot with his hands, which really frees one up. He also works without a plan, which for me is a very hard thing to do. But everytime I do it, my work is that much better.
Here he is starting a painting. I wish I'd gotten a picture of how much this changed, but I am a dork and my camera sucks so this is what I got. Other people in the class were taking pictures too, so I am sure there will be some blog posts with more before and after.
I did get some before and after shots of another painting he worked on throughout the day.
This is how it looked when he brought it to the class:
This was one of 3 or 4 paintings he worked on at a time. How it looked at the end of the day:
This is how my hand looked after about 20 minutes of painting:
My sister Beth smooshing paint around with her hands:
Beth and I switched paintings several times. If one of us was not happy with the direction, we gave the painting to the other one. For some reason, it's actually easier to paint over someone else's work than it is my own.
On the right, is my favorite painting I did that day, in progress. (The boards on the left are by Katie Kendrick.) Beth actually started this board, but was not pleased with it at all. By the end of the day, she ended up with the smaller boards and I had the two huge boards. I love to work large.
Same painting at the end of the day:
And a detail:
In the foreground of this picture is the other large painting I started:
And later in the day. I'm not sure if that face is right.
I took after photos only of my sister Beth's work.
Work by Beth Gibbs
I did all of the 'painting' on this board, but Beth had the vision to see what was actually there (the house).
And here is the only photo I took of other people's artwork. I thought I'd taken more, but evidently not. I was up from 6AM (hello Kavya!) and had only gotten about 6 hours of sleep before. Tho today I am feeling much worse and crankier even tho I got a lot of sleep last night and she woke up at 7AM today (tho she woke up and fussed for a minute at 1AM, 4AM, and 5AM).
The horse painting on the left is by Stephanie Brockway and the rest is by Judy Wise
Things I learned and what I want to remember:
- I need to paint. I don't know how I'll squeeze it in, but I have to
- Painting large rocks.
- Working intuitively instead of massive planning is more interesting and yields better results for me.
And that's it in a nutshell. It was a great class and a good day.
current often read book. I adore the illustrations in this children's book, but more so I love faking all the accents and reading the fun wordplay. Soon, I think Kavya will be able to sit through more of this book.
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