Sunday, April 29, 2012

Conversation With An Artist




“When did you first see yourself
as an artist?” I asked him. 


“When I was three,” he replied.
"My mother saw something
in my finger paintings that showed
an artist inside so she provided

lots of pencils, paint and paper
to let the artist within me emerge.

Art is not a talent but the ability to see:
shapes, formed by light and shadow,
details, accentuated with the gradation of values,
life, recreated through contrast, composition, and color

each revealing a point of view or abstract interpretation.
My teachers have always said,
Learn the basics so you can create
masterful abstractions."


"I’ve always thought the statement
was a ploy to get students
to suffer through the basics,” I said.

“If you study the master’s early works
then look at their later abstractions
you can see the mastery in the distortions
of artists like Dali or Picasso," he insisted.

"Some novice painters want to make the leap
without mastering the basics and often fall short.


I made a living as an illustrative artist
completing complex reproductions
of people, animals and buildings.

I know the stripped pattern of a zebra
is very different from a tiger

and each zebra has a distinctive unique pattern.  

Art is a way of seeing and can be taught.
I am here to teach you that skill
so get to work and take off your blinders.”

Real conversation with Dana Newman,
Art Teacher at Art Studio in Westminster, Ca

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