Well, my second painting course came to a close this weekend. Was a short course this time. 8 weeks at the Educational Alliance with Avron Soyer. The Educational Alliance group of people is really different from the group I painted with in my class at the New School. Most of the students are much older and already have a lot of experience painting on their own. Some have very firmly established painting styles. I love getting to see their work evolve and appreciate the opportunity to occassionally talk to them about what they're doing and what they're thinking about their work. This is what I was missing this summer and why I was interested in the idea of finding a painting partner.

This first year as a beginning painter has been pretty hard. I've learned a lot by talking to my teacher about what I'm wanting to explore in my work, and that has helped me tremendously to not feel like I have to push to get somewhere quickly. I'm finally beginning to feel more comfortable with the process of creating and living in the drawing and painting medium. In the beginning of the year I was so rigid -- drawing these tight shapes learned from very academic drawing classes at the Art Students League that are probably meant for more experienced artists learning the anatomy. Now I'm getting more sensitive to the figure by way of learning to sense shape and volume. This sensitivity in paint is somehow also improving my drawing.

It's been a terribly difficult, but very satisfying year. I have so much to learn and it feels like I will never stop learning. For a beginner, I feel like I've at least become familiar with the medium, learned some technique, and above all am working at it instead of just dreaming about doing it. I don't have any sense of my own style yet. I spent the beginning of this term trying to work directly with emotion and did a lot of paintings that were dark and with figures that had a very grafitti-ish look to them. But the direct painting of emotion was very hard for me. I ended up feeling blocked and hated drawing/painting with confronting those emotions. Some people do this well and it works for them with great results. When I began to ease up on myself and stop trying to paint emotions directly or tell a story, but instead looked for the poetry of life in what I paint, then the process of painting felt less difficult. That's where I am now and I hope to continue on this path.