Alice is turning my Cogs

One of the artists that was recommended  for me to check out is Alice Neel. After looking her up on the Internet and looking at her art online ...weeks later...one of my family members was watching the documentary. so i found a seat on the rug.
 here's the link to the trailer:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8sPFpXakI0

Ready for the Chopping Block

Final piece ready for critique. I've noticed some areas that are awkward to me and others but over all I'm  content with this first piece and excited to get more feedback on it.

one of the questions that keeps coming up as  a painter who like to use photographs as references and likes to paint identifiable images... is why paint it when you can or even have the photo? it is a good sturdy question and one that i think will continue to come up for me. i am still learning how to articulate my answers and thoughts. and i am still figuring out this question. it took down this quote from a documentary on the painter Alice Neel; it has given me something to think about. yes! i feel like it captures how i feel a bit:

"The business about the difference of painting and photography becomes crucial in a sense that the photograph does capture somebody in a manner  which freezes that person in an instant; a painting never freezes in quite the same way, painting takes place over time. The mere fact that painting  is not a second arrested but is a relationship  of seeing, the seer and the subject means that painting  contains duration. When you look at a painting, you are seeing an extended moment happen not just time stopped which gives the photograph a somewhat more  morbid character and painting a less morbid one."

~Robert Storr, Dean, Yale School of Art

moving along

some growth and ungrowth..or more like growth in the wrong direction....gah. live and learn.

i got all excited experimenting with the background. my attempt at "letting go"  on Wednesday  was playing around with the pallet knife  in the background. i went a little crazy. the experiment went a wry; the colors were too bright, it had chaotic lines and the focus was no longer on my figure. definitely not what i wanted...but i'm glad i let myself just play around a bit, even though part of me felt like i had wasted valuable time, i still feel like  it was a good lesson of what not to do for these paintings. so i reeled myself in, painted over the mess and am in the process of creating something that works.

Bad idea shots