Photographs!

Here are some photographs from the field trip! Sorry I don’t have more… I was ALL over the place excited that day. Besides, most of the places we went technically didn’t allow you to take photographs (so I can’t share the ones that I ended up sneaking… hehe…) This was definitely the most incredible field trip in my world. We did so many amazing things, visited so many amazing places, had so much amazing food to eat, and finished it all off with Stomp! live. It was basically miraculous. I feel like I learned SO many things that just cannot be taught in a classroom that day.

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Where do we go, when we allow art to move us?

Before I started this inquiry question of “How does art move us?” or “What causes art to move us?” I already knew that art did in fact move us. I had learned that from many moments of awestruck physical reactions to art. I also feel like art can move us emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. It can stretch us, shape us, color us, mold us, and reflect upon us (isn’t it funny that art can do to us the very same things that we do to art?).

Now I seem to have journeyed into the realm of “Where do we go?” or “Where can art take us?” and I love it! I feel like using quotes from “Oh! The Places You’ll Go” by Dr. Seuss, but that is just what pops into my head when I think of those two questions. The possibilities are endless. Physically art can take artists around the globe and back again, as they explore new inspirations to paint. It can take viewers around the globe too, as they follow exciting exhibits or museum trails. Emotionally art can take us to places of healing, places of struggle, places of beauty or peace. Mentally art can teach us things that we may not have known before. Spiritually art can open us.

Art can move me from a solid stance of black and white, this is right/wrong/left/right/mine/yours/weird/normal and smack into a place of gray or color where anything is possible. A place where those words no longer exist. A place where we find ourselves asking, “What is right? What is wrong? What is left? What is right? What is mine? What is yours? What is weird? What is normal?” A place where we cannot seem to answer those questions. A place where we don’t seem to care that we can’t answer those questions.

Art can move us apart, and it can move us together.

Art has taken me to some very scary, and also very healing places. Previously I have shared about my relationship, and the fact that it is over. I also shared that I was not only struggling to allow myself to feel pain about it (trying so hard to be strong) but that I started to deny it ever even existed. I was going to pretend it never happened. I could NOT have a failed relationship. What would that say about me? Surely I wasn’t good enough, if I did not succeed in love the first time around.

This is a piece of my personal art that was a very pivotal point in my moving on. It allowed me to remember the wonderful moments, the bittersweet moments, and the sad moments. It allowed me to open up. It allowed me to breathe, cry, feel. I relived the emotions like a roller coaster, and I am surprised this doesn’t have water spots from tears on it. It allowed me to be honest, with myself. Yeah, I missed what we had. Yeah, I missed those bushy eyebrows. Yes, I was in love. Yes, it’s over. Yes, that hurt me. Yes, I felt ashamed. Yes, I grew stronger. Yes, I moved on. I am even stronger in myself now than I was just a short time ago.

I have moved into a new stage in my life. Seeing art, creating art, touching art, learning about art, finding out why the creators created their art, and reflecting on all of it has moved me from one emotional spot to another and I am going to keep moving. Art will always be a part of me, and when my art starts looking the same I know I will have a problem. I never want to be stagnant in my art, or in my life. And aren’t they reflecting each other?

(I have a collage to upload sometime too, reflecting on the field trip. There are also LOTS of photographs… ha ha, please be patient!)

An Opinion of Beauty

Okay, so I just can’t seem to get this “History of Art III” class out of my head. Heck, I think I’m still amazed at how much of the FIRST Art History class that I took won’t leave me alone. I am always thinking about the class, or seeing things that make me think of it. I love it! I feel like I have had so much growth, not just as an art history student, but as a person.

Yesterday for Mother’s Day (I love you, Mom!) we all went to watch a movie that my mom has wanted to watch for a while. The movie we watched is Soul Surfer and it is about a young girl who loses her arm in a shark attack. All this girl has ever wanted to do is surf, and she feels like her world is shattered but she is trying to stay strong.

She can’t seem to get a perspective on her life, and she has no idea why this could have happened to her. In a beautifully touching scene where she confesses to her mother that she is afraid she will never look normal, or never be loved by a man, her mom uses ART to show her that SHE is beautiful.

Click the image to visit the website I got this image from.

“This woman was the pinnacle of beauty for centuries, and she has one less arm than you,” the young dreamer’s mother lovingly explains to her daughter.

 

“Yeah, but I can surf,” the daughter rebutts, with a smile.

 

Art has a magnificent way of being there, right when we need it. We are not only given the freedom to create art, but we are given the freedom to interpret art. I am so glad that art exists, not only so I can create art to inspire others but so art can be created to inspire me.

Field Trip

I asked myself “What am I learning?” somewhere in the middle of the field trip and I did not have an answer. It was wonderful. I felt full, immersed, soaked, drenched in so much of it that I really did not have a solid answer. I tried. I could have told you some names and dates of paintings, what they were made of, and all those other things… but I didn’t want to. I didn’t learn about that, not really. I learned about art, and the power that it has. I learned about creativity, freedom, rules, passion, systems, trust, communities, struggle, triumph, glory, and shame. I learned about life, and that is something that just has to be learned. I learned to see beyond the black and white, into the colors of everytthing around me!

I am going to create something to better express the things that I learned. Look out, world!

(This is really short, because I still don’t have my own computer up, but I wanted to update a little bit!)

Searching

Sometimes I feel like this. I can relate to this girl- alone, sad, wondering what her purpose in life is. At least, that is the message I feel when I look at the painting. Eugene Delacroix was a French painter who was not afraid of dark emotions- in many of his paintings there is turmoil, angst, drama, anger, or sadness. Sometimes a single painting has all of those vibes. He was a Romantic painter, paying great attention to expressing passion in his art.

This painting is called “Orphan Girl at the Cemetery” and it is oil on canvas. The way he composed the piece draws your attention to the portrait of the girl, who looks dazed and alone. You can barely see a tear forming in her eye that is closest to the viewer. After some time I realized that the background is actually littered with several gravestones that show it is a cemetery. The colors are solemn, much like the girl. It just feels grey. It is a subtle passion, or a painter who was passionate about painting the lack of passion the girl had.

The moment where you feel numb and empty- searching. I think Delacroix captured that moment very well.

Are we searching?

Crying Through Art and Observing Community

So you guys already know that I was struggling to find the tears for a while. I kept feeling like I should cry, but the tears wouldn’t come, so many times I found myself drawing crying eyes. I would cry through my art, because the tears just wouldn’t come. There are crying eye sketches all throughout my journals, my watercolor pieces, and littering the folders of my computer. These are just the ones I have in digital format, because I created them using the computer.

I almost didn’t post these, but I decided that I would open up this question and ask what you guys feel when you see this art. What about these moves you? Do you have negative reactions to them? Why? Do they move you at all? What about other art featuring crying eyes?

Bacchus and Ariadne by A. Turchi

Do you ever stop to really let a piece of art move you? Am I the only one that just walks on by, without waiting for the story that the art has to tell me? What if we paid attention to people’s art? What sorts of differences could we make as a community if we really observed, instead of just trying to keep up with the unrealistic pace society tries to set on us?

Let’s discuss this piece, Bacchus and Ariadne. What do you see?

A Slap in the Face (continued)

Francois Boucher, The Fountain of Love 1748

Jan Steen - Courting Couple || this is probably one of his early pieces, its oil on panel. It is commonly referred to as "Merry Couple".

Both of these images strike a chord with me. I found them while I was browsing through Baroque art on the internet, and I immediately became drawn to them only to look away and purposefully avoid them. I felt irritated by the images, even jealous, but not by the skill of the artist or the style like I normally would. It was the subject matter that really got to me. Why are both of the couples in these pieces so unfairly happy? It is as though they do not have a care in the world, or like the world doesn’t even exist around them. I almost remember what that felt like. I almost remember, and that is part of why these images have such a strong effect on my emotions. The other reason is that I have not allowed myself to really be upset about a very difficult time in my life that I went through recently. I have forced myself to pretend that I am okay, that life goes on and I don’t have time to stop and cry, I smile so my Mom doesn’t worry; it has gotten so bad that I can’t even cry when I am alone anymore. This is not to say that when I am out and about and I am happy that I am faking it- oh no, I have had lots of wonderful, glorious, blissful moments where life manages to distract me from myself. It is the moments that I am alone, or hear a specific song on the radio, or see something that brings back a memory that I feel it.

There have been many moments lately that I have just waited for the tears to come, but they don’t. That is not normal for me at all. Instead I am left with this ache, this gnawing ache in my chest. I see these images and the emotions and feelings and pain only deepen, but I still don’t cry. I still don’t let it out. I just hold it in, pass on by, don’t let it phase me. You could say that I am afraid of letting myself down. I told myself I would never fall in love, but I did. I fell hard and fast, for the first time in my life envisioning some sort of romantic future for myself and another person. I saw myself sharing, compromising, loving. It was beautiful, and honest, but it wasn’t easy. There was a distance, and we had to fight to see each other. There was relational chaos between our loved ones around us. We both fought for so long, but in the end he gave up on us. I can’t say that I blame him, because I still am not sure that I was ever worth the trouble. I somehow hardened myself even worse than before I met him. I tell myself I never wanted love like that anyway.

Somewhere from seeing this art, reading the quote I posted in the first part of this, deciding to blog about my personal experiences with these two paintings and share a little bit of my life, I have finally found my tears again. I discovered how much I actually miss what we had, no matter how wrong or right it might be, and no matter how crazy people might think I am. I am not saying that I would ever go back, but I genuinely miss how things were and who I was before I felt so completely broken. I have no idea where to go from here, or how to fix it, or if I even can. I don’t even know if I want to. As much as I try to just “be an adult” about it, Mom is worried about me. She says I’ve changed. That is the scariest part.

The hardest part about all of this is that I almost saw it coming. I guess almost isn’t ever good enough.

Have you ever really wondered why you might not like a painting for a reason other than what it looks like? Have you ever felt this way about art? If you are willing to share your experiences with art and how viewing it and getting through all of your negative emotions can be therapeutic, or not therapeutic depending on your views and experiences, I welcome you to do that now. Have a virtual cookie and make yourself comfortable here. We can go deep, or we can stay in shallow waters- the choice is yours. I would really like to read your opinions though, if you wouldn’t mind posting.

Contemporary Art made for Humor

This is deviating a little bit from where I was at the other day, and I will be making myself revisit where I was, but I just couldn’t keep myself away from this either. I was wondering about modern art, and the art around us in the world today, and I thought that a lot of the art I see and like is humorous. I love to read comic strips, and who hasn’t seen one of those darn lolcats? I got to thinking about it, and I realized it related to my project very well because funny art definitely causes a physical reaction in art. It probably causes the most common physical reaction in art, or at least the most commonly recognized. It causes laughter! Stifled laughter, full-out laughter, chuckles, wide grins, blushing, choking, wide eyes, and probably other things are all reactions I have seen to funny artwork.

While I was looking through some “funny art” I stumbled across this image, which I cannot help but post.

This image made me laugh, of course, because I deleted my own Facebook for fear that I was too addicted. I have said that I went “cold turkey”. I also realized though that sometimes “funny art” is more like “propaganda”, and often it is negative. Why do we laugh at negative things so much? Is it really that funny when somebody is dissing someone or something else? How much art out there is art created for the sole purpose of ridiculing someone else publicly? Or an entire group publicly? I am sure we could find plenty of it, but it got me to thinking that maybe more of our personal biases come from the art we view growing up than we think. Many people like to ask the question “Do our personal biases effect how we view art?”

I believe that is a valid question. Another question I’d like to bring to the table is “Does the art we view effect our personal biases?” I’d certainly like to think so! But I guess I still have more learning to do, and more research.

Do you have any opinions or comments? I’d love the insight you have to give!

A Slap in the Face

Have you ever felt like art is “a slap in the face”? I have. Sometimes I feel such jealousy or fury at a piece of artwork, and it just gets under my skin. I don’t always know why, but sometimes I do. Sometimes I feel bitter about the subject or theme. Sometimes it is less of a slap in the face, and more of a sting. I see a piece of art that reminds me of somebody I miss, and I find myself trying so hard to hold back the tears. I am left trying to hold back the tears because the sting feels too real. I feel it in my eyes, my chest, and eventually it seems to pierce my heart and let all of my emotions out against my will. Sometimes that is good for me.

I am going to discuss more about this later, but right now I have to get ready for work. I feel like this is something that needs to be explored, particularly by me at this time in my life. This was brought on by a friend of mine saying this: “Art is meant to move us and if it brings about negative or even hostile or reactions it is still stirring up emotions within us.” I think that is a very valid point, and I’d like to spend some time exploring that.

Caravaggio, Chiaroscuro, Cameras, and … Craziness.

We talked about Caravaggio today in class and how he used a lighting technique called “Chiaroscuro” to make his painting more three dimensional. I think it relates to my theme and question of how art touches people, because it pulls you into the main focus of the image. You can’t help but feel what the “star” of the image is feeling. I fell in love with the idea, and I was immediately thinking about my camera and all of the buttons on it, with different lighting and poses. We had limited time, resources, and space but we ended up coming up with this last minute:

It is kinda funny, and we wouldn’t have been able to pull it off without the wonderful help of the “models” and the “lighting people” and the teacher, and all of the “willing assistants” who examined the painting in the book and arranged everyone. It was truly a class effort, and I swear I had the easiest job out of it all. All I had to do was frame the shot and push the button… I definitely used Photoshop because it didn’t end up being dramatic enough since we couldn’t make the room dark enough. I probably should have spent more time on it… hmm… I kinda like the little halo.

It’s kind of an “epic fail”, but at least we tried! And I also learned that if we really had the time, resources, and space available too us this group could make great painting reenactors. I think I am going to try using the Chiaroscuro effect in future photography/art endeavors because it really does have a way of pulling people in. I feel a photoshoot coming on. Don’t you just LOVE inspiration?