Our first demo for the New Year was given by our very own Alan Close. He is the amazing all-rounder of the arts, a Renaissance Man. There is no aspect of art in which he is not expert. He has learnt his trade thoroughly. As a tutor he can bring students along in watercolour, pastel, oils and acrylic. He can teach life drawing, portrait or landscape. He has given demos in spray painting, pen and wash, scratchback and pen and ink. Today he would show us how to make an abstract.
The two rooms were set up with table and chair for each of 60 people (which was a tight fit). Each was provided with a plate with squeezes of primary colours and a sheet of cartridge paper. There was a three page handout and a colour copy of a famous painting. The handout is reproduced in this newsletter.
It was to be a hands-on workshop rather than a talkfest so Alan had practised his statement while Jean timed it. 12 minutes.
19th and 20th century artists had moved from realistic paintings to paintings that excited and moved us by their vibrant colours, shapes, lines, and textures. They were trying to discover an artthat did not depict a real object nor rely on a natural meaning. However they found that they still had to make artistic decisions, such as the composition of their shapes, the texture and shading of their areas, the relative placement of their collages. So the abstract emerged. Wassily Kandinsky is now recognised as one of the foremost practitioners of the abstract. You will be able to name more.
The procedure was to be three stages, pencil in the background of about a dozen triangles, paint them in to your own taste, then when dry, paste over this background cut-out elements to make an abstract like Kandinsky’s.
Heads down, tails up away we went. Not much talk, complete absorption in the task. It was hard to get us to break for another delicious afternoon tea. That gave drying time. Then back to paste on the elements. Alan then gave us each a larger sheet of black which framed our work and we all took home a very satisfying piece of art, whether we could draw or not. Not bad value for eight bucks.

– Colin Browne

To see more examples of the works from the workshop and the instructions provided here is a link to the full article in the March WAA Newsletter - pdf file 945 KB:

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