It’s great to choose what to study. For my first semester I decided to concentrate on my my favorite thing: painting. My semester Visual Culture project is broken into 3 parts.
I began with an in-depth look at contemporary artist practice. I studied works of Leslie Hewitt (I know, Hewitt is a photographer, but the works are still life photographs). I read The Forever Now : Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World by Laura Hoptman of the MOMA, NY and Painting Now by Suzanne Hudson. I also visited galleries around Nashville. I visit new exhibitions and write about what’s going on in contemporary art in my city.
For the second part of the visual cultural project I am reading about classical painting, perspective, light, and display. The texts are dense but my favorite so far is The Rhetoric of Perspective : Realism and Illusionism in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still-Life Painting by Hanneke Grootenboer. If you LOVE Dutch still life painting this book is hard to put down! A real page turner! Grootenboer writes 21 pages about 1 Dutch breakfast painting. It is a must read. I am also reading The Art of Describing : Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century by Svetlana Alpers, The Language of Displayed Art, by O’Toole, and Vision and Art : The Biology of Seeing by Margaret Livingston. A pretty intense list but extremely satisfying.
The texts have inspired my studio practice as well. My goal is to be able to better describe my choices as to why I paint the things I paint and have a contemporary and historical understanding of my painting practice.
For the last section of my first semester I take a more personal approach to my study but I will include works oscillating between late capitalism and domesticity.
I am working with Sowon Kwon, a brilliant artist and assistant professor at Parsons School of Art, Media, Technology in NYC. For my studio practice I am privileged to work with the talented and accomplished Vesna Pavlovic associate professor at Vanderbilt University Department of Arts in Nashville, TN.
I hope that my studio work reflects my studies and I am able to communicate a multi-layered meta-vanitas relief painting as a reflection of this meta-modernist age in which we find ourselves. Oh and here is a picture of my cat.
Thank you for following my art journey.
MyBest, Emily Warren emilywarrenarts.com https://www.instagram.com/emmywarrenstudios/
