The interesting thing about this blog (for me) is that I find works that I had forgotton about.
These paintings were actually an exercise that I set myself at College - which is why they were never shown - but I still really like them. We had been set an assignment where we had to go into the AGNSW and copy a painting (I chose a landscape by Douglas Dundas - I think I liked all the blocky bits...
Chianti Country) They were painted during my second year, so it would have been 1986.
I then decided to make copies of some of my favourite paintings at the time. They were to be roughly all the same size (about A4) regardless of the size of the original. They were all done in oil and all on pieces of masonite that I found somewhere. Here are some of my favourites....
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| Cezanne - I really liked the puppies.... |
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| Morandi - what's not to like... |
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Gorky was one of my favourites...
Each painting was to be painted in the same manner - whether it was a Matisse or a de Kooning - there was to be no self-expression or loose brush-work, just meticulous copying. When I unwrapped the works recently I found a piece of paper with a plan for hanging the paintings in an irregular grouping. This was a method of hanging that I have used a number of times since - I hadn't realised that it started with these paintings.
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| my collection of modern painting... |
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| detail |
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| the painting layout |
I love these works - just wrote a whole comment about how great they were and it got deleted, so that's frustrating...
ReplyDeleteBut we had the same exercise a year (or so) later, I did a cubist picture of a pillow fight in a boxing ring.
I love that you kept them all and that you kept doing the project, and you have a layout design for them!