Monday 25 April 2011

Course work: Continued work on Project Three, starting to paint in the pond, and making some minor changes on the dam to better reveal it as a three-dimensional object.  I think that I will still have to darken the face of the dam (and the associated reflections).

Reading and theoretical studies:

Matthew Collings This is Modern Art

Weidenfeld and Nicholson, London, 1999

Pp. 246-262

(This was a difficult book for me: perhaps I am too old to understand it.  If one reads almost any paragraph aloud, it sounds quite similar to the babbling of a manic-phase bipolar disorder patient…all stream of consciousness, one thought tumbled upon another.  I could not decide whether the author was serious, or whether he was ridiculing modern art, or art critics, or maybe the reader.  I certainly found it difficult to consider as art much of what was represented as art by the author. I am surprised that OCA recommends this book, as it does not seem suited to the serious student.  Perhaps the text seemed more relevant when it was written, twelve years ago.)

Sketchbook work: A page of attempts at sketching our usually-asleep but seldom still cat, not very successful.