Drapery

“To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare fail… failure is his world and to shrink from it desertion…” -Samuel Beckett

| ssemchuk

February 29, 2016

Seven Apples WIP, Feb 27, 2016, Mixed on Canvas, 48" X 36"
Seven Apples WIP, Feb 27, 2016, Mixed on Canvas, 48″ X 36″

This piece is progressing. I’m currently planning to complete the drapery in the background in a less posterized fashion than the apples, but I’m not completely sure. I’m kind of just playing with this as I go and making decisions along the way. My apples may still change completely before I call this finished.

“Art begins with resistance — at the point where resistance is overcome. No human masterpiece has ever been created without great labour.” – André Gide

| ssemchuk

February 22, 2016

Seven Apples WIP, Feb 20, 2016, Mixed Media on Canvas, 48" X 36"
Seven Apples WIP, Feb 20, 2016, Mixed Media on Canvas, 48″ X 36″

Here’s the new painting on my easel. I had taken photos of fruit right after Christmas and had picked two images to paint early in the new year – prepping both canvases at the same time. I thought that if I had two larger paintings going at once, if I got bored or stuck working on one, I’d just move to the other. My unfinished still life with the red apple is annoying me currently, so I started looking at this one and was not as interested as painting it as I had been back in January. To make it more interesting I have decided to play a little. I am working with book paper and transparency in the background and simplifying the gradation of the images throughout. I’ve converted the image to black and white in Photoshop and then posterized it to five tones of grey plus black and white. It’s still early on and I may change it entirely before the end, but here’s the beginning of the image. Any comments are welcome.

“An amateur is someone who…”

| ssemchuk

January 25, 2016

“An amateur is someone who supports himself with outside jobs, which enable him to paint. A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint.”
– Ben Shahn
Still Life Red WIP
Still Life Red WIP, Jan 23, 2016, Oil on Canvas, 48” X 36″

“Cultures are defensive constructions against chaos… “

| ssemchuk

January 4, 2016

“Cultures are defensive constructions against chaos, designed to reduce the impact of randomness on experience. They are adaptive responses, just as feathers are for birds and fur is for mammals. Cultures prescribe norms, evolve goals, build beliefs that help us tackle the challenges of existence. In so doing they must rule out many alternative goals and beliefs, and thereby limit possibilities; but this channeling of attention to a limited set of goals and means is what allows effortless action with self-created boundaries.

It is in this respect that games provide a compelling analogy to cultures. Both consist of more or less arbitrary goals and rules that allow people to become involved in a process and act with a minimum of doubts and distractions. The difference is mainly one of scale. Cultures are all-embracing: they specify how a person should be born, how she should grow up, marry, have children, and die. Games fill out the interludes of the cultural script. They enhance action and  concentration during “free time,” when cultural instructions offer little guidance, and a person’s attention threatens to wander into the uncharted realms of chaos.”

– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience 

I’ve just started this large canvas and am looking forward to seeing how it evolves. The photo has a lot of reflection on the lower left. Hopefully next time I’ll find a better angle to photograph it from.
Still Life Red WIP
Still Life Red WIP, Jan 3, 2016, Oil on Canvas, 48″ X 36″

“To be an artist means never to avert one’s eyes.” – Akira Kurosawa

| ssemchuk

Nov 22, 2015

Another painting of white fabric. I know, how edgy and daring can I get? I had meant to do a close up of my subject matter from the last two images, but I couldn’t find my original photo, so I started fresh. I chose an image with more contrast this time.  And I painted on panel instead of canvas. I prefer stretched canvas, but didn’t mind the hard texture of the panel on this one. I’m not thrilled with the visibility of the brush strokes of the gesso layer – next time I will definitely sand my panel smooth before I start. Overall, I’m not unhappy with this image. I like it better today than I did last night when I called it finished.

Drapery 3
Drapery 3