In This Moment

'‘In the course ART 344 Representational Painting, students created a range of still life and self-portrait paintings on various sizes of canvas and masonite boards. Tin, glass, food, ceramic, and mirror reflections, were just some of the surfaces we painted from.

During the term we completed four paintings, two were shared photographs to improve technical skills, and two works were conceived by each student. We are proposing to include all the paintings created during the course to capture a range of content and techniques.

For our first painting, each student selected a low intensity colour range (complementary colours plus black and white) and painted a simple still life scene that featured a fruit or vegetable arranged within a ceramic vessel. By focusing on limited values, and identifying shapes and values instead of objects we were able to improve our skills. For our second piece, we painted from a seemingly mundane but rich image of a jar and tin can. Through this painting exercise we honed our skills and spotlighted our individual painting styles to create a beautiful representation of each student’s individual talents and processes.

Our third painting, a narrative still life, is a project where each student chooses a minimum of three objects to create a conceptually rich story for the viewer to ponder. These pieces were created on larger canvases and boards to capture details of the images that would otherwise go unnoticed. Our final painting is a reflective self portrait that challenged us as artists to capture elements of our personality through a reflection of some sort, alongside the depiction of objects that are meaningful to us individually. Mirrors, figurines, pets, plants, phones, and photoshop were used in the creation of our source images.

As a class, we are excited to share what we have learned and created over this past semester and we hope our work can inspire an appreciation for the complexity of representational painting.”

-Kirsten Koellmel