Non objective art

I am here at Haliburton School of the Arts for the week studying with Lila Lewis Irving of Toronto. She is teaching us about non objective art and it is surprisingly much more difficult than it looks. We are doing acrylic studies on watercolour paper. We started with tiny line/shape drawings for a design idea. We use only 5-7 shapes. Then we did colour design studies using light and dark also. Next we tried value studies on 1/4 and 1/2 sheet using darks that we created ourselves. Today we started on full sheets with colours also. The town had a parade tonight which I went to and tomorrow is the walkabout at the college and high school showcasing all the art from the different classes.Thursday and Friday we continued doing pieces with colour, value, shapes, repetition . Lila demonstrated the use of textures that she orders from Curry's. Lastly on Friday afternoon we did a critique of 6 pieces of art done by each student. Here is the address for Lila's own work.
wwwlilalewisirving.com

Final Art Class

The last of anything is bittersweet. While I am anxious to see my family and home, I have enjoyed meeting many new people in the art community. Some of us were treated to a tour of the lithograph studio where John Lennard and wife Marilyn work during the summer months. They shared their work with us. I was very impressed with Marilyn's sculptures particularly the black sandstone sheep. They will be opening a studio and shop in Goodwood soon. In the afternoon we either completed some of our 4 works or started a fifth on our largest canvas, using our gray scale values in either impressionism or expressionism . I decided to do a landscape of a large tree with yellow sky and purple flowers in the foreground. I chose expressionism and got a good start on it. Then we had a critique by John of one of our works and I put up my Ontario landscape in analogous colours, using expressionism. To my great surprise John had nothing to say about any change or improvement to this piece. He told me to sign it, frame it and that he would be proud to have this hanging in his own house. High praise! The class gave me thumbs up and high fives. Maybe I will enter this in the fall show. I will upload some photos on Monday.The students shared their email addresses and one by one left.

Impressionism Haliburton style

It is day 3 of Impressionism with John Lennard here at the Haliburton School of the Arts. The chairs are very old and very hard. Unfortunately my room is not air conditioned either. We are in Class from 9 until 4:30, taking notes and doing painting exercises.Yesterday we did a fall water rock scene and today a still life with bottle using the values and techniques that John taught us on Monday.There was a jazz singer after school today and in the evening I saw a great play in the school auditorium put on as part of the Highlands Festival. Tomorrow afternoon is the walk about where we get to visit the other classes and see the work they have been doing. At 7 p m there will be the art auction in the main campus building. The money raised by auctioning art by the teachers will be given as scholarships.