The end of the semester is always a bittersweet time for me. I feel spent after all that hard work, and relieved that my mission is accomplished and I can look forward to a bit of time to relax and collect myself before the next semester begins. But I also greatly miss my students and the special group comaraderie my class established after having worked intensely together for the past 14 weeks.
This semester I taught a color theory course at a state college, and I was very proud of the students' accomplishments and their progress over the course of the semester.
Above is a project by one of my students, Claudia Parent, who created this work in response to an assignment to illustrate a memory that involved a strong impression of color. Claudia discovered an intuitive working process this semester. She was initially inspired by a photo of a merry-go-round in motion, which she used as a starting point for this complex variety of colors, textures, and paints applied with different tools.
You can see why it feels so rewarding to me to have the opportunity to encourage my students to find their voices as artists. No one goes into teaching to get rich, but many times we teachers are richly paid in a way that doesn't involve money: by knowing we are part of helping someone along in their process of discovery.
2 comments:
Catherine, thank you for your support and encouragement this semester, I am going to keep up with your recommendations on painting. I like what you were saying about working with spray paint. I may just try some this summer.
Claudia
Claudia, it was a pleasure to work with you this semester. Definitely experiment with the spray paint. I can imagine the type of marks it makes (soft edges) really enhancing the kind of intuitive paintings you created in my class. Please keep in touch!
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