Adriaen Brouwer

Adriaen Brouwer 1605-1638, Dutch. A favorite artist of the professor. While reworking Survey of Art History lectures on the Dutch Baroque remembered Brouwer; he does not make the text book, only in upper level classes might he be mentioned. He is too gross for most tastes but was collected by Rembrandt and Rubens. He probable died a drunk. He often paints himself in dark greasy taverns that he frequented. Today he would hang out and paint similar places. He enjoys showing his class such images...they bring ART to a different place and let us see that art can be found in any subect. Course images and a very deliquite painters touch. The pictures are all small 12x9 or smaller.

Winners

His students won ribbons in the Tomball Art League show. Here are two of them...more to come he hopes.
Here are the new paintings from this week.

Searching for Helen  8" x 10" acrylic 

Island of Helen 9" x 12" acrylic

Refuge 8" x 10"acrylic

Whimsey 10" x 14" acrylic

The Process

The  painting is really working. Still Untitled but it is a shelter of some kind. Island, Headland?

It is a sedutive place...maybe the Island of Cerci? He thinks maybe, but according to Homer, She turned men into swine...why were they unclean?  Perhapes what they ate? They taste good.. what's the problem? Religion again. Good in one Bad in another. She must have been potent. Goddess are..they change from one form to another. Poor dumb Paris, What a choice. Ok chose the one with no cloths. GOOD choice fool.

The Professor is thinking of islands with shelter...he has done this before, he returns to old sources . When he sees the painting in a photo problems become aparent. Many years ago when he made BIG sized pictures he looked at them with a reducing glass...much eaisier in this digital age. All in all not a bad day...and he has a week off...to let it rest out of his sight.....Spring Break and the weather warms and the humidity rises sultry seductive. He has his paints with him waiting for the Goddess.

OMG 2

He thinks that this picture has a life of it's own. It keeps changing. He is putting it away for a week. The still life in the background is good.He likes all the different pictures produced in his class. He has always worked solitary in a studio; for the past 3 years he does not have a studio and realized that in order to work it had to be done within a class.

Teaching a studio class can be rather boring...watching a class work and going around offering suggestions.

This way he can see what is going on and do his own. They comment and he asks them for their opinions and suggestions for titles. His ego is constantly stroked; so is theirs.

 

Yesterday's Cookies

Professor Art teaches at a community college. He has been there 18 years. He likes it. The students are always new and generally unskilled. Again and again he hears “I can’t draw” or worse “I want to take an art class but I cannot draw a straight line.” He says “That’s why you take a class, to learn how;
that’s my job and we do not draw straight lines. I will give you the time to develop skills and encouragement to play with them. My classes teach self discovery and either you participate not. Of course you can do it your own, but you won’t. By mid-semester you should see improvement as long as you work.” He does not have a standard other than Do It With Feeling. “People are so worried about doing it wrong”. He says, “when making a work be forceful, be yourself…Art’s a big lie and people will believe you if it is a good one." He enjoys community college because the students are always new and always the same. He is not concerned with the “artistic ego.“You do it my way in my class and you will learn something and after you leave you can do anything you want, but you will have learned something from which to react...” He hates Art Sandbox that’s how he was  taught.
AND he really hates text books on how to Draw or Design or Paint. Reading about do it does not work. Reading about driving a car is not driving. Why go to class? The Artist/Teacher must explain and demonstrate how it’s done. It gives you place  to concentrate and communicate with peers. “What about those “art workshops? You go and learn someone’s technique and then ? "I remember a student you was doing OK. who took a work shop and came back with some very nice looking pictures and then reverted to their old ways.” How do you use what you were shown in your own work and make it your own? Every teacher wonders how to transfer knowledge learned in one class to another. “What are the complementary colors? How should you use them."
Here's a picture he made a few years ago...in another time and space. In answer to a jesting, derogatory question   "what do you paint? Kittems with Yarn?" The very worst  subject with no redeeming value. Seemed a good theme good to him.

OMG

The professor began his Design class. At this time in the semester everyone has loosened up and have conversations and sort of know what he expects. Those that come and work learn. They actually talk to him. The island picure needs to rest until next week. He has others that are  fermenting. He began on one of them; after 4hr.s he could not stand it. It became more and more naturalistic. It dragged him into  a place that he knew he did not want to go. Like "I do not want to go into THAT bar." He preformed radical surgery and then it was his again and the results are shown here. OMG how did that happen; he is delightfully embarressed. More to do.

The pictures start like this.

To draw is to think.

Dear Professor

Commandant Professor

Dear Professor,
The alarm goes off at 7:00am, the student turns and try to reach for the damm machine that it is interrupting her dreams. The alarm stops and the student re-program the alarm for 7:30am. The student wonders "Can I dress and go to my Design class in 30 minutes.....yeah sure zzzzzzzzz.

The alarm goes on for the second time, right at that moment that the student is dreaming with a sunny day at the beach, after all the student is from Brazil. The student looks at the window and sees nothing but a gray sky and a dreadful weather.

The student than makes a very "smart" decision. I will miss Design but I will go to Painting. The student puts the alarm to 10:00am. The student doesn't want to disappoint or be a subject of the professor's blog for missing the class, but it's wet outside and the student wonders if she will freeze......yeah sure zzzzzzzzzz.

The alarm goes on for the third time, this time even her dog approaches her door and wonders when the lazy owner is going to get up. The student feels without any inspiration and thinks that her paintings sucks. After all the professor said once that she was no Picasso. The student doesn't care and thinks that for sure Picasso heard that same sentence from a professor......yeah sure zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

The student loves her professor and wishes him a good day and goes back to sleep zzzzzzzzzzzz

This brush is one of those special brushes that you cannot buy. It must be self made. It is sort of a mop for sloshing color around. I wish they were for sale. When they wear out you cannot get another until one magically appears in your brush bucket. He used it on the back  ground.

Here is Stage 6.

The picture changed today; It fought him as a teen ager. It insisted on being itself and he allowed it.
now allow it to ferment untill next week.