EMILY VAN ENGEL

My dear friend Marla commented halfway through her degree at Wharton, “what did I think this was going to be… a walk through the park?” Although I had remembered this warning, I seriously thought that art school would be a walk in the park for me. Yes, there would be some late nights pouring my soul into a canvas, and some early mornings showing up to an art history lecture in a dark room wearing all black, nursing my newfound caffeine addiction, but generally, my fantasy of returning to school required the least amount of effort yet produced the most glorious of results.

Finding out my class assignments for the semester did not squelch my dreams of what my life would be like as a student. In fact, it only heightened it. I figured that a life drawing class on Fridays would help me relax and wind down for the weekend. I’d gracefully whip out drawings of the human figure, go to a yoga class, and then meet friends for cocktails.

A month into school, my drawing class is clearly the most demanding class of them all. The class is six hours long, with minimal break time. On top of that, the teacher assigns six hours of drawing assignments for homework each week. Once Friday afternoon rolls around, I am completely exhausted.

Despite the harsh reality that the class is not easy, I’m really enjoying it. I’ve started to look at people and see imaginary structure lines on their faces that mark the correct angles and distances. I’m posting some drawings from my most recent class where we focused on accuracy in proportion, and I hope to be able to draw the figure with the correct proportions soon.

Some people are into S&M; I am into art school. Between the self-inflicted torture and the nudity, the two may not be too different. In any case, I have moved to San Francisco to study painting at California College of the Arts and will be here for the next two years.

My teacher handed out popcorn to the class in my first painting class. Not to eat, but to paint. The challenge was to represent one teensy tiny kernel on a three foot long by three foot high canvas, painting in black, white and grays.

It’s amazing how every one of the students had such a different vision. I am posting pictures of the seven different paintings and am keeping them anonymous for now. Please post your guess below as to which one is mine. They are labeled 1 – 7, and you can see each painting’s number assignment by scrolling your mouse over it. If you want some clues, you can check out some of my other work by clicking to the link on the left that says Return to my Portfolio Website. I will send the correct guesser a special treat. (If there’s more than one, I will choose at random, just like the guys at Car Talk.) Check back in October to see who guessed correctly! And I apologize that Painting 1 is partially obscured by my teacher who is walking by it.

This weekend I participated in a fundraiser for the Center for the Arts in Jackson called Whodunit? where all of the works are anonymous. Artists decorate small canvases, each six inches by six inches, and the curators display them without the artists’ names. Up to 10 patrons can put their name in a lottery for each piece, and at the end of the night, the patron whose name is drawn pays $99 for the piece and finds out who painted it. The proceeds benefit the art center.

I was really excited that someone bid on and purchased my painting! My painting is based on a photograph I took while biking in Grand Teton National Park with my friends Poa and Betsy a few weeks ago. I am intrigued by our relationship to our environment, and this piece shows one way that we interact with it.

Greetings and welcome to my blog. I will use this space to share my latest work. Feel free to peruse and to make comments.