Rachel Etz- Assignment #1

For this first assignment, our class went to see the exhibition in Haas by Kim Banister. I found this exhibit very beautiful and natural. Each of the works in the exhibit focussed on the human form, or organic forms that ended up looking like human forms. Also, all of the pieces have the same dripping paint/color quality to them, tying them all together very nicely. Most of the works are also not framed. The artist chose to leave the very large scale works just on paper, seeming to give more character to each of the works, because they become a more active part of our world.

The piece that seemed to be the most interesting to me is titled "Red Series #3"(Seen Above). The artist chose to depict two people, a man and a woman, who appear to be a couple. The pose seems to be very intimate, and along with the expression on the face of the woman, the gesture seems very emotion filled. For this painting, the artist drew the figures in charcoal, then applied Linseed oil ( which is where the dripping effect come from ) and the blows on pigment to achieve color. In the case of this piece, the colors seems very earthy and/or flesh toned.

From listening to the artist speak, and from seeing her work first hand, I feel as if her work communicates what she wants it to tell. She is very interested in the human form or organic forms that look like human forms, which is represented by all of her pieces in the Gallery. Also, she seems to like experimenting with color and materails. This can bee seen in the variety of different blown pigments in her works, and also by the use of the Linseed oil. The Linseed oil seems to be an important part of her work, because it allows for a different type of experimentation, both with the blending of color, and the actual perservation of the art.

assignment 1

The artist has seemed to set up the show by body positions. The first couple of pieces ( to the immediate left) were people huddling up together, followed by a woman by herself represented in a variety of different pieces in a variety of different poses. Getting to the far wall on the right there appeared to be two pieces dealing with couples, in both pieces the woman was depicted kneeling on the ground and the man was holding her shoulders or her hand standing above her. All the pieces seem to portray the same female figure in a different pose and they all seem to be cohesive with each other, dealing with the same style of art and colors used.

In the piece I chose, the artist seems to use a lot of flesh-toned colors with greens and reds. She doesn't use any framing; it's just the large piece of paper hanging. She really utilized how the body can contort into different positions with this piece, using a lot of curved lines make both bodies culring up together. She also used a lot of lines in the bodies themselves, which continue with bleeding of red and greens to the bottom of the paper.

After reading the artist's statement I feel that she is actively potraying what she has said. You can see how the different pieces represent a specific emotion. Especially in the first picture, I get a sense of sadness or distress. the two people are huddling together, almost as if they are both deeply upset and crying together, holding each other for comfort. The other one's with the couples howver, show a feeling of intimacy, the women calmly kneeling and the man behind her, holding both her hands gently. I feel that the artist has done a good job explaining how she feels and what she was going for when she made these pieces.