We held our first workshop of 2018 earlier this month with a fascinating twist from Debora Stewart. For whatever reason we don't generally seem to see much abstract work in our medium, but Debora may have some of us rethinking that.
She certainly had a beautiful box of pastels with great color options, but she also used a great many other mediums in her work - charcoal, clear gesso, liquid acrylics.
She started off with lots of charcoal strokes and had participants try the same on their own - not trying to create anything objective but just being free and loose.
It was certainly a lot of fun to see what Deborah laid down on her paper. She had fascinating exercises like giving a word like "excitement" or"peace" or "childlike" and then having the students drawing marks that that word embodied to them.
These started with charcoal marks and then colors were added that the words invoked as well.
The first day of the workshop was completely non-objective.
But there was a lot of information about colors, shapes, values, and all things that apply no matter what sort of art you produce.
The second day there were lots of floral displays set up and there was information about abstracting an objective object like a flower, but also about being able to use the same techniques for portraits, landscapes, or anything else.
This created some beautiful pieces - not only like the one above by Debora, but by the workshop participants as well. All those I spoke to said it was a very freeing and liberating workshop experience.
Hmm, I wonder now how many more abstract pieces we might see at our upcoming juried member show later this year?
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