EMILY VAN ENGEL

My spring semester has hit the ground running. I started classes last week, and it’s going to be a busy semester as I’m taking five classes instead of four.

I’ve gathered so far that art school is a collection of people each of whom live fiercely by their own rules; their own quirky, arbitrary rules that may or may not help them assimilate with the rest of society. The leaders of this pack are the teachers, and my new painting teacher Howard has been cracking me up. The painting that I’m posting is from his class today. First off, he asked if we’d be okay with starting class at 9:30 instead of 9 am, because “who gets up that early?” He announced that he goes to bed at like 2 am, so it’s not like he’s really awake before noon anyway. He reminds me of Larry David with his appearance and voice.

He asked us each to bring in samples of our work for today’s class. When he reviewed mine with me, he told me that he thought my paintings awkward. I gave him a puzzled look. “No, awkward was really big about 10 years ago,” he explained. “Awkward is good.” He said it’s probably because I can’t draw, which is okay because neither could Cezanne, and neither could he, frankly. At least my homework assignment for next week is to do more of the same. He did, however, ask my classmate to “reinvent” herself for next week.

In any case, I’m really happy with how today’s painting turned out. It was really fun to make.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 28th, 2011 at 12:47 am and is filed under art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.