On Tuesday it was time for abstract art! I wanted to combine the abstract with the collage, and it worked out well. I started out by talking about Paula Rego, a portuguese artist living in London. She is an interesting (and very skilled) painter with many different styles. In the 1960s she made some beautiful big abstract pieces in mixed media. We looked at some of her work and talked about form and color, as well as the different materials used. They all had very different ideas about what it was supposed to be. I thought it was interesting that it had to be something; a monster behind a tree, an old woman with flowers - it could not, not be something! As oppose to our weeks of various still life, this time our conversation was all about shapes and colors - the students had to focus on the overall look and feel of the piece, rather than the right proportions. I sensed that they enjoyed this change of pace, and they created some interesting pieces. I think they did really well in cutting out odd (and what seemed random) magazine pictures, gluing them around the cardboard, and then connecting the images with paint as the last step. They clearly worked very spontaneously and that gave some good results. I was truly impressed! Next week we will continue the collage, but in the shape of self portraits...
