Now that you have asked me to be more critical I will exceed my personal limits a little with my opinion of what you're doing in this technique. But only because I know you are aspiring to something great and original. Understand also that you are coming from a world that is very different from mine. Italian contemporary art is very cool, but my West Coast, California tastes lean toward the bright and flashy and less earthy. I have seen decades of it and I like some when it works and don't like certain other looks that came along about the same time.
Some of the flashy stuff is super wherein it became elegant where design made up for lack of time spent. Some quick offhanded work on the other hand is merely quick and schlocky and has associations for me of motel rooms and doctors offices where any crap on the wall would satisfy their bad taste.
What is the difference? Depends on what you value. Sometimes cheesy made the artist a TON of money. But I don't care for it and would critique it for whether I would hang it or try to paint like it. So I am opinionated and have certain personal standards that I often don't bring into my comments because the artists here are on a journey and I find my words can shut someone's artistic joys down. And I never want that. Besides my opinions are my own, and some would agree and some disagree and they would be right for themselves in both instances.
So this critique is for your evaluation and consideration only because I don't know exactly what you have in your head with your latest stylistic endeavors. And rather than you become me, I have tried to become you (only you, Andrea, in about a year or two) so that what I say is something that might be true for your direction. So you've opened a door where you will now need to evaluate my comments as much as I evaluate your art.
I think you can paint really well. This works for you but also works against you a little because you can miss weak graphic ideas because overall it looks decent. You have such facility with paint that you may just be painting the main thing well (the girl) in a known way, and then popping on a few flourishes which don't particularly do anything for the painting, but aren't so distracting that they would make the painting bad. (Personal taste only)
So for example the ribbon lines that you put on top of your paintings don't relate to anything. They're very obvious, but they don't define a concept or a vision. It's as if you painted a nice painting then when it didn't excite you anymore, you wanted to do something beyond the normal stuff you know you're good at but make it stand out from all the other artists who paint pretty girls. So you pushed some of the paint around but to no purpose, only hoping that it would lead to something. The problem is that it hasn't. It has remained like Leonardo painting the Mona Lisa and then taking a marker and drawing a handlebar mustache on it himself. The mustache has nothing to do with anything else and it looks more like graffiti as a separate comment from a different agenda that distracts and draws attention to itself. It was interesting once. In all of them they look so much alike that it's like you don't know what it is or how to expand the concept.
Compare some of the paintings of the beautiful ladies with the penguins. I think the penguin painting works. Why do you suppose I might find that so? It's not because I prefer pictures of penguins. It's because the sensibility you had for your flourishes that usually sit atop and apart from your painting are in the penguin painting in evidence all through the piece. The swashes have multiple characters, have variety, and are part of the voice you use to describe the subject. The flourishes in the paintings of the girls seem like an afterthought sitting atop the pic, if you see what I mean.
So I have to ask you, what is it about the swashes that's appealing to you? Was it the fast brushwork? Was it the ability to put down information like flashing a rapier like Don Juan confronted by a cuckolded husband? Is it a visual externalization suggesting the mutilation of your obsession and unrequited love of such remote beauty? Or are they marks like your signature writ large though hidden as an encryption? Or, if it's more of a visual motif? If so, to me it seems like it's coming to the party after it's winding down.
If the latter, visual/painterly reason, then I would want to start the painting with that swash in your strokes. Are you loving the curves? Why not put more of those into the painting when you're initially beginning your composition? Why not look at the picture you're about to paint and find the action in it and slap in some tone according to that axis. And then begin building your marks off of that, one relating to the next?
Painting like that, working up and considering every mark relative to the others is usually very self-conscious and unnecessary, unless you're experimenting and are seeking something new by doing variations on a tight theme until something emerges for you that you can run with, but it ought to give you a handle on it by the end for the next paintings. Knowing that it's for the purpose of growing and expanding past one's normal method is to process into being a cohesive look based on a single theme.
It's taking the risk of messing up one or two paintings in slow deliberate evaluation of every mark that will allow you to see what's happening so you can move it ahead. Hopefully it will refine itself as you go through a few exercises. And you certainly may change and alter your main premise as you go. But it will at least force into clarity why you're doing something or should try a deviation, so that the next paintings will have more purposefulness of your test style. It's more of a purge for flushing out into view a paradigm shift and less of trying to find an improvement based on a one time superficial affectation like using glitter eye makeup. That's going to get old fast because there's only so much you can do with it because you saw someone in a glamor magazine do it. It's sort of theirs and not yours. If you don't really know what you're dealing with it's hard to go anywhere with it.
Knock off artists have this problem. They are usually limited to copying flourishes in context, but then don't have a clue what to do with it in a different scenario. So you have to begin owning this look and varying it as a primary device in at least a few of your pieces until you have the essence in hand. And then it is yours.
Go man go! And remember, I am just somebody talking. I could be completely wrong for where you're headed. But even if what I say is something you disagree with, it's serving you in that you will have a reaction to it which should help you clarify what you want to see clearly. I really like your work.
Last edited by D Akey; 03-26-2014 at 02:14 PM.
"Not a bit is wasted and the best is yet to come. . ." -- remembered from a dream
Senior Member
) and messed up things BIG TIME, but you know I have to follow not my mind but my heart! Grazie ancora carissimo! Ciau
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