Module #1 Assignment

Explorer exercise.

I decided to go with “Everything is interesting.  Look closer”  and “Notice Patterns - Make Connections.”   

My usual style of painting is naive art and I use the primary colours a lot.  I love colour and simple shapes.  So,  I decided to do a painting that would be the last thing I would think about doing.  So I planned on creating a painting that would be just straight black lines on white paper.  I was going to do this first but I just couldn’t quite do it.

So I went to the next phase of “Notice Patterns - Make Connections”. Then I thought of the Eiffel Tower,  a structure I love very much and is straight black lines for the most part.   And then I made another connection to the “campaniles” …the wrought iron bell towers you see a lot in France and that I’m very attracted to.  Many of these have straight black lines but I couldn’t find any black and white drawings of those so the wrought iron is mainly curved.   I decided to make a collage using the drawings of these items.

I still couldn’t quite bring myself to do the painting.

Then I thought that these were very hard solid objects and I wondered how can black and white be softer so I thought of animals I love that are black, white,  or black and white.  This lead me to think of orcas,  belugas,  skunks,  dalmatians,  border collies,  and seagulls.  So I made a collage of those.

And I still couldn’t quite do the first thing I was planning and then I had a breakthrough.  I love the work of Mondrian and the idea of doing an “empty”, (i.e. just the black lines that are so important in a Mondrian painting)  Mondrian painting appealed to me.   So,  this ended up to be more of a drawing with a black marker.  I never was very good at doing straight lines even with a ruler but I will blame the wobbliness on the camera angle.

What amazed me about this whole process is that I realized how much I like black straight lines!  So,  while I was struggling to see things for the first time....I somehow ended up doing that.


Note:  One of the "explorer ideas" was to "see things for the first time"  and I was having a lot of difficulty doing this and reflected on that so when I ended up doing that I was really rather amazed.

Here a "non empty"  Mondrians for those who aren't familiar with his work.