This weekend was my first oil painting class at OCAD in Toronto. I’ll be attending classes once a week for the next few weeks. The class was extremely satisfying in ways I hadn’t anticipated.
Sometimes, it’s as if my conscious mind is the last to know what my creative mind wants. I can recognize now that I’ve been craving instruction like this for a while. Over the past couple of years, as a means of broadening my artistic palette, I’ve tried focusing on different types of expression. For example, for a while I focused on drawing and painting animals. I tried a range of animals from pictures and then worked on horses from life drawing. For a period after that, I spent time focusing on versatility of colour use.
I’ve found that learning new things, and sometimes re-learning old things, is really intrinsic to creative development. I’m happy for this time, where I can focus on developing my technical painting skills afresh. Sometimes I forget how valuable it is to work on those skills – often times favouring composition or imagination, over technical ability. I suppose that’s the downside of being self taught.
Through looking at students work in the art school and listening to my professor I understood for the first time the real value of technical ability in painting. At any given moment, a person is the sum of their embodied genetics and experiences. For an artist, one’s work is no more or less than a reflection of that moment of self. The work that you make is the manifestation of that momentary distillation of self. The acuity of that expression is only possible through a marriage of perspective and skill.
On the studio side of things, at the moment, I enjoy the process of working with oils. I don’t know what it will be like, working with them on reflective pieces, since I’ve only just begun to experiment. I imagine that the longer drying time would lend itself to a different sort of process than I’m used to with acrylics. With the little I have done so far though, I really enjoy how the colours spread and blend.
More than anything, it feels amazing to be taking a class in a real art school. I know my class is not an undergrad or masters course, but to have instruction in that kind of facility, from a real professor, feels amazing.
Jumbie Works 