30 SECONDS IN THE STUDIO
You Might As Well!
(A message to my workshop students from a few weeks ago on Monhegan Island.)
|Good luck painting tomorrow and remember to sling some paint and have fun. A reminder from Charles Movalli for you. “No pattern, no painting” I pretty much live by these words!
I’ll leave you with some Robert Henri. If you don’t know the tiny little book, ‘The Art Spirit’, I highly recommend that you get yourself a copy and spend time with it. It’s one of the best publications about painting ever. It was said that listening to Robert Henri talk for 5 minutes would change your life. Can you imagine that!?
Henri stated:
“Cherish you own emotions and never undervalue them.”
“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable”
“Paint what you feel . Paint what you see. Paint what is real to you”
Henri is really talking here about subjective truth. Subjective truth is a philosophical concept attributed to the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard. Subjective truth is how you as an individual sees or experiences the world. No one else can see or experience the world as you do. Not in a million years. Not ever.
Be yourself out there when you paint! Have confidence in being you. Nobody else can be like you, so you might as well do it :)|
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I try to keep students fired-up in workshops. From our initial meet and greet just prior to the start of the workshop, through morning lectures and demos, one-on-one time and even with the nightly email that I send out to prepare them for the day ahead. The above wording is an excerpt from an email I sent Wednesday evening prior to them going off on Thursday for a full day of painting on their own and then back to the Monhegan House for an afternoon critique under the shade trees. Pam and I encourage them to paint at any location on the island that speaks to them and we ask them to incorporate the principles we’ve been teaching in the workshop as they work. A big part of a plein air workshop is, of course, to teach them how to approach outdoor painting and to help improve technical skills, but I’d be cheating them if I didn’t include the importance of being themselves in the process. We all see and perceive the world around us differently, and so we might as well embrace our individuality and let it flourish onto the canvas. Ultimately, it’s up to the individual artist to give themselves permission to let themselves be in the moment and since nobody else can be like you, you might as well do it!