high school

moon & north star

come high school i found my love: art noveau.  alphonse mucha blew me away.  something about his prints - the thick lines, the celebration of nature and the female form, the stylized and flat surface that still told so much.  amazing.  i was obsessed, and remained that way throughout college.

by far he has been the most influential artist i have encountered.  i love his fabric, his hair, his compositions, all of it.  my room is plastered in him and if i had endless money i would have a huge tattoo of his work.

dawn and dusk, amazing.

apotheosis of the slavs

in high school i had my first art history class as well, and was introduced to both fantastic and unimpressive "masters" - for example: 

i am not a fan of impressionism.  i'm sorry.  when i told my best friend this in high school she tried to convince me to change my mind by insisting that everyone likes impressionism.  and maybe the part of me that still doesn't like it is that angsty and rebellious high school kid, but if you left me in a room with a monet tomorrow,  you'd find me asleep in there an hour later.  i appreciate what they did with color, what they were saying, what lines they pushed.  i can easily find the brushstrokes and colors they chose interesting.  but most impressionist paintings just don't move me in any way.  there are a few exceptions, of course - caillebot's rainy day in paris is wonderful, but that is on the side of impressionism that is less about sudden instances of light and more about sudden instances in time

i am drawn towards more representational things, in general.  i have trouble being moved by many abstract works, and i myself have difficulty creating anything satisfyingly so.  in my mind there is so much that the eye sees that seems almost impossible for me to reproduce in any medium that when i find an example that succeeds, like this rainwater between the bricks, i become drawn in.  i guess the works that speak to me have an obvious technical skill involved and a very keen eye for what is right in front of us.  where else have you seen rainwater look so beautiful?  besides on the street right in front of you.