I just had my last official painting critique. It is a strange feeling on many levels. Ideal art critiques usually go as such, you line the room with yours and your peers finished work. The class and teacher(if you are lucky other teachers/grad. students join) and everyone walks around the room and takes in each other's work.
After some processing and side talking the class reconvenes. Maybe the students even wrote notes or followed a thought provoking question/answer handout. The teacher leads the critic and then you and your peers have a chance to voice your opinions/comments also.
In an ideal critiquing world the classes would be somewhat small so it doesn't go a ridiculous amount of time and the class does not get burned out.
In an ideal critic world teachers and students feed off each other and are into it! They want to talk to each other about art, about concepts, about what is driving them to create. People voice strengths and weaknesses and grow stronger, artistically and conceptually.
This is ideal and it wasn't until I didn't have that this last semester that I realize I miss it. It was partially my doing(I think?) since I was in and out of the studio so much going on and the language barrier was definitely there.
The studio here in Turkey was set up so that every student worked in their found personal section of the room. The teachers weren't really involved in the work and didn't seem to give feedback until once at midterm then again at the final critique(again maybe it is diff. for some Turkish students but????).
I am realizing I like more feedback through out but I am also realizing that I am graduating and won't get it unless I go to grad. school or meet lots of willing art friends to make our own group.
Also the critique today was not a class crit. It was each individual student goes in the room with his/her work, closes the door and a group of three to four teachers tells you what they think. No class discussion and no growing from hearing comments from/about other students.
I will never hold this kind of critique in the future if I teach.
There is it's own art to critiquing also. Seeing the work and articulating your words. Also at first it is really intimidating when you are on display. Making work is so personal and an attack on your work may seem like an attack to you personally.
In the beginning years too I didn't know what to say at them and didn't appreciate their importance. I was intimidated to speak and didn't think I had the right words but now let's talk.
It is a powerful thing if you can get people together to talk and they are open to positive and negative reflections and contemplations. We need this more in other places in life, politics, work place, relationships etc.
About the above painting.
On the previous post I wrote that I was excited to be finished doing projects I don't want to do. I take that back and will need to set deadlines for myself and have separate studio space(not my living room to have to set up then clean up each day). In the future I want my own messy art space.
Anyways the above painting had the concept of model and me and I didn't want to do it. I started drawing myself outside in the garden at my Istanbul house. I live with an adorable 5 yr.old and she wanted to check it out. She brought out her paints and stuck here little chair and table right next to me. She is 5 so of course she was running around up to her mom, back to me, little painting, little climbing all the while sporting a pair of purple and white bunny ears. Hard to draw a moving model. So while I was getting bored and thinking that I don't care for self portraits I gave her a brush and she started to draw on my canvas with me. She hates ants and there are tons of them so I painted a few of those into it as well.
So the above is our collaborative work. I like the process of making work far more than the finished piece but want to be proud of the finished work. I find I struggle between the free and controlled mark making.
