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Let's hear it for criticism!
Every Tuesday, I get together to paint with a group of four to six artist friends at Wave Hill. We paint for a couple of hours and then do a show and critique over lunch. The painting I do at Wave Hill is not usually memorable; it’s the criticism that is invaluable. Criticism is worth its weight in gold to any artist who aspires to improve (and can’t we all — improve, that is, and don’t we all — aspire to improve, that is?). I do. No one should be cruel, but constructive criticism can allow us to see mistakes we might have otherwise missed and then fix them.
Of course, some mistakes are really obvious. One of my favorite memories of the classes I took with Dale Meyers was the night she looked at the fence in a painting I had just “finished” and said, “Why did you do THAT?!?” I laughed and said I wasn’t happy with that aspect of the painting myself, but wasn’t sure how to fix it. Her suggestion and that of the artist sitting next to me enabled me to turn it around. And Dale hadn’t exactly pussyfooted around (telling me 15 different ways that it was beautiful before pointing out the problem). She cut right to the chase giving me what I wanted and needed: useful criticism. I fixed the painting.
But I keep bumping into fellow artists who are unhappy about any criticism, no matter how it’s expressed. There’s the teacher at the League who won’t allow the work in the class show to be judged. Or the student who won’t take a particular teacher’s class because she (the teacher) is “too judgmental.” Or the art club member who always votes to have non-juried shows or doesn’t want the judges comments disseminated because he thinks jurying will intimidate some of the artists.
Of course, no one should be “forced” to listen to criticism. But the chance to have someone who is knowledgeable look at your work and tell you what they think is invaluable. It’s very hard to judge your own work when you’ve just put so much effort into creating it. And it’s not just that we are too easy on ourselves, thinking we’ve created a masterpiece every time. Sometimes we’re too hard on ourselves, when the gap between what we intended and what we actually created is just too great. What matters is what is actually there; the painting itself must be judged on its own. What works and what doesn’t. Even people who are not artists or especially knowledgeable about art can tell you something useful about your painting. If they like it, why do they like it. What, specifically, appeals to them.
One of my artist friends has banned the word “interesting” from her — and my — vocabulary. According to her, it’s what you say when you don’t like something, or you don’t know what to say. “Hmm, very interesting” is the kiss of death. It means it isn’t worth figuring out what works and what doesn’t, how you really feel about it. The devil’s in the details. It’s the specifics that matter, even if the person can’t always explain it. “I love the clean colors but for some reason my eye keeps going here. There’s something about that that bothers me.” As the artist, that a comment you can explore and use.
Elephant Ears Won First Prize
I’m really happy to report that my painting, Elephant Ears, won First Prize for Watercolor at the 32nd Annual Vintage Artists Gallery exhibit. Interestingly, members of the Riverdale Art Association, of which I am Vice President, won top awards in the Oil/Acrylic, Sculpture, and Graphic Arts (and, of course, Watercolor) categories.
Elephant Ears
I saw this plant last year at the Orchid Center in Delray Beach, Florida when I was recovering from cancer and the idea of painting something called Elephant Ears made me smile. Just think about how apt the name is for that plant, yet how different the painting is from what you might expect from the name.
My husband took a picture of a post-chemo-no-hair me at the Orchid Center to commemorate my recovery. I won’t be showing you THAT picture. But looking at this painting does make me grin.
Costa Rica was/is wonderful
Well, I’m back from 2 wonderful weeks in Costa Rica with 2600 photos and lots of fun memories. Among other things, we did horseback riding, mudbaths, white water rafting, Pacific outrigger canoeing, ziplining in the forest canopy, and lots of walking on rainforest trails. It was the kind of vacation you need another vacation in order to recover from the first vacation. Not terribly strenuous, but certainly action packed.
What I didn’t have much time for was painting. So here are a few quick sketches…
The aptly named Angel’s Trumpet flowers are a salmony pink color and quite large. These were growing outside the Doka organic coffee plantation [if you haven’t ever tasted Costa Rican coffee, go out and buy some now] as part of an effort to keep bugs away from the coffee plants without using chemicals. So beautiful but perfectly utilitarian. Maybe they kept the bugs away from us too because I didn’t get bitten once (a minor miracle).
Angels Trumpet
This next sketch came from my standing up on the riverbank (Rio Sarapiqui) looking down at the rest of our group getting out of the rafts and starting to climb up the bank. The rafting had been very exciting, but this just felt like a lazy sunny summer day gazing at the river and the red life jackets through the trees.
Rafting
Costa Rica has some really beautiful flowering trees, among them the Tamarindo. The pink and red and orange flowers against the blue sky made me glad to be alive.
Tamarindo
The most dramatic of the flowering trees was one called the Flame of the Forest. Its flame red flowers made a beautiful canopy, like a fire engine red umbrella over the green forest. Unfortunately, none of the pictures I took worked (my shaky hands and the fact that we were always moving and I also needed to watch where I was putting my feet). My frustration that I couldn’t get a good picture of it must have influenced this sketch: I started to paint some red flowers, but somehow it turned into the Flame of the Forest.
Flame of the Forest
I’ve almost finished organizing all the photos we took. The need to learn an upgraded software program (ver. 4 to ver.9 of Photoshop Elements) on a new computer (Mac) made the process particularly frustrating and time consuming. But I knew that if I didn’t do that first, I’d never finish it at all. So now I can finally start painting again. Whew. It’s about time. I was starting to go into withdrawl.
Ruth Hurd | BLOG 