perspective

Perspective: How We See

adult learning, art, Attitudes, Creativity, inspiration, Leonardo da Vinci, Ministry, mystery, Painting, perfection, perspective, Philosophy, risk, salvation

Perspective is both a mental outlook on life and our ability to view things in their true relations or relative importance. In art class, we use the tools of perspective to make a two dimensional surface appear three dimensional. One of the techniques is drawing parallel lines as converging in order to give the illusion of depth and distance. An untrained eye doesn’t see this at first, but once the illusion is pointed out to them, they never can unsee it. We worked last year with one vanishing point—railway tracks—and two vanishing points—buildings seen on the corners.

Two Point Perspective

There are mysteries in this world which we don’t understand, but those of us who have been taught by others with this “secret hidden wisdom” can share it with others. The Ancient Greek mystery religions kept their knowledge for only the select few, who learned it by word of mouth in secret ceremonies. The early Gospel, however, was proclaimed openly to all who would receive it. Yet even in Corinth, some believers wanted to be more special or spiritual than others. Paul wrote them, saying they needed  to know “Nothing beyond what is written,” for the scriptures contained within enough for their salvation (1 Corinthians 4:6). As an apostle, he was a steward of the “Mysteries of God,” and even if he were to understand “all mysteries and all knowledge, and…have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but… not have love…(he’d be) nothing.” (1 Cor 13:2)

Cornelia: Art Room Door

As a teacher, I can provide students with learning opportunities for every skill in art. Thanks to  Oaklawn UMC, and the generosity of my clergy pals over the years, I have a space in which to teach. I don’t charge for the lessons, since I consider this my ministry in retirement. I’ve taught every age from kindergarten through adulthood. There’s no age I don’t relate to. As Dale Chihuly says about art: “Most of art is the work. Not every piece is a success. We learn from our mistakes more than from our successes. If we don’t show up to work, we never have a chance to do well.” (It’s not an exact quote—I watched the film last night).

Gail: stage 1

As I tell folks, we may be saved by grace, but progress in art is by works. We can’t have our egos invested in the product. Right now Tim is in recovery from carpal tunnel surgery. Doing light exercises with pencil is good for his wrist muscles. Art class is a form of physical therapy. He wanted to draw a pumpkin because it had some shapes he’s struggled with over time. He noticed if he moved forward or backward by mere inches, the image he saw was different. This too is a matter of perspective. What is our view point: is it fixed or variable?

Gail: stage 2

Gail and I worked on painting an interior scene. I freehanded my painting, while Gail used her ruler and pencil to draw in the door shapes. I still wasn’t totally recovered from my colonoscopy—my age is catching up on me. My brain felt foggy, but I was trying. We came back for a second week to work on this project.

Gail: stage 3—extended floors

When we leave our work, we have an opportunity to clear our minds and reflect on other things. On returning to our canvas, we then look at our image with fresh eyes. My engineer friends call this the “saturation principle.” Just as the land can only absorb so much water before it runs off, our minds will get clogged up and we just can’t seem to make progress. Getting up for a drink or a walk about is a good thing. Sometimes the paint won’t dry fast enough for us either! That’s an indication to work in another area, even if we don’t want to. We must listen to what our work is telling us.

I often let my paintings rest overnight while I get a good night’s sleep also. In the morning, I’ll see if it still holds up, or if I need to keep painting. Sometimes I’ll take a “finished” painting down after a few months and repaint it. If it won’t last three months under my eye, it doesn’t leave the house. But I’ve learned from the experience. If we ever quit learning, we are dead. I don’t plan on being dead any time soon.

ABC—Positive and Negative Choices

Learning how to see in art is the most important lesson in art. Most of us won’t be Michaelangelo or Leonardo, but we can be the best of who we are. Our outlook on life in art means accepting our imperfections and our weaknesses. Some people can’t accept the learning curve necessary to make acceptable looking products. The point of art class isn’t the product. It’s the process of doing. With the doing, the “product” will come around eventually. We just need to have a positive attitude. Besides, our salvation isn’t dependent upon our accomplishments in art, but our faith in Christ and our love for Christ spread abroad into God’s world.

A Gift from my Mom

Perspective is also our attitude towards life. As Bob Ross, the great philosopher of happy trees and the joy of painting once said,

“If you have light on light, you have nothing. If you have dark on dark, you have nothing. It’s like in life. You gotta have a little sadness once in a while, so you know when the good times are coming. I’m waiting on the good times now.”

He said this in a PBS episode filmed shortly after his wife had passed away. Art class is also therapy for the soul, for we paint our emotions on the canvas, whether we realize it or not. We don’t have to talk about our feelings, but art helps us express them.

When I taught art back in the dark ages, I told my students if they learned only one thing from me, they would never forget it. A positive attitude leads to positive behavior and positive behavior leads to positive consequences. A negative attitude leads to negative behavior and negative behavior leads to negative consequences. That’s the simple ABC’s of life in the art room. Try it. You’ll like it. This is how we teach “Perspective.”

 

Joy and peace,

 

Cornelia

Master of Glass: The Art of Dale Chihuly

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt24862190/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk

 

Feeling Down? Here Are the Best Bob Ross Pep Talks

Feeling Down? Here Are the Best Bob Ross Pep Talks

 

Homage to Morandi

adult learning, art, Children, Creativity, Faith, Love, Ministry, nature, Painting, shadows, Spirituality, trees, United Methodist Church, vision

Morandi: Still Life

My students in the art class at the church have shown much progress since we began last year. I’m proud of them for sticking in there and taking this journey down a path less traveled by others. Most art education classes begin with the idea of a model and the students should all try to match it. This is typical of “right answers” in most schoolwork, such as math. Indeed, 2 plus 2 should equal 4, and not 3 or 5. We can’t get creative in our answers in math class, but we can have room for creativity in art class. If we have a still life to render on a page, we should have something that’s recognizable as the objects, but Cubism has taught us the objects don’t have to be painted as Realism. We can paint them different, emotional colors, as in Fauvism, or in a monochromatic scheme, like Georgio Morandi.

Mike’s Most Recent Work

Another growth area we have is continuing to observe the subject while we draw and paint. Children draw the idea or symbol of the thing they’re representing. If we’re attempting to render a realistic subject, we need to constantly check back to the objects to notice the negative spaces and the shadows, as well as the forms themselves. This is a matter of discipline, which all artists have to undergo. I spent many an hour in art school drawing models without ever being able to look at my work—this is how you train your brain to connect to your hand. The first efforts are pretty goofy looking, for sure. You have to leave your ego at the door if you want to become an artist.

All beginning artists try to make a shape perfect first and then color it in, much like filling in the black lines of a coloring book. This year we’re working on losing our need to be perfect from the start, and begin to paint from the first. This lets us have more emotion and feeling in our work. We do this by drawing with a brush and a light, yellow wash on the canvas. We can easily paint over it with our thicker paints. If we don’t get it right, we can scribble over it, or use a pale pink wash to make a different line. 

Gail’s Most Recent Work

About the age of nine, children begin to draw what they see, but still have no real sense of perspective or scale. The most important object is the largest. About the time they become teenagers, they show an interest in realism and the artistic skills needed to produce these tricks of the eye. More precocious children will begin earlier, and others may never show an interest at all. Some naive painters will retain childish forms, but have strong pattern and design elements, such as Grandma Moses, who painted the memories of her childhood. 

Last year I started the class on basic perspective. It might have been too difficult for some, or too uninteresting for others. Yet basic perspective is a building block lesson for any art lesson that is more than decorating a flat surface with pretty colors. Likewise, making a shadow study of basic geometric forms is important because all objects in nature can be reduced to a geometric form: tree trunks are cylinders, fir trees are cones, oak trees are spheres, houses and churches are rectangular solids and pyramids, and bridges are rectangular solids supported by piers, which are more of the same. A complex landscape becomes easier to sketch out in block shapes if the artist can identify the basic components of what he or she sees.

Last Year: Boxes on Top of Boxes

People think art is “Just something I can do when I feel like I’ve got nothing else to do.” This is the description for finger painting for kindergarteners, if you think about it. Art is for both thinking and feeling, since both the brain and the heart need to be active at the same time. Some say only the heart needs to be active, but the head is exercising choices and making decisions to limit the red or to add more yellow or to rip a huge black down the side of the canvas. Only the artists who are unintegrated will contend they work only from the mind or from the heart. We actually work with both, even if one is diminished in nature.

Cornelia’s Homage to Morandi

If the great commandment, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind,” means anything in the art life, it’s we aren’t meant to separate any one part of our experience from any other part. In our art expressions, as in our faith expressions, our heart, soul, and mind needs to be fixed on love of God, as well as love of neighbor, for loving our neighbor, in whatever form, fashion, or fix our neighbors find themselves in, is the same as loving the image of God in which they were also made. By loving our neighbors, we love ourselves also. If we hate our neighbors, we hate ourselves. God didn’t mean for us to hate God’s image.

These are the wonderful spiritual truths we learn in art class. It’s more than learning how to mix colors or draw a box in perspective. These are art skills. Life skills are way more important. Take a look at the work from last year and this year. You can still join this class. You aren’t competing with anyone, but you will be working to improve over time. Going onto perfection takes time. Now is a good time to begin!