Gallery Talk 2

I decided to take a bit of a different approach this gallery talk. I chose to compare and contrast a painting that I liked versus a painting that I didn't care for. The piece that was aesthetically pleasing to me was the New York Series by Elizabeth Cramer. Elizabeth draws and paints pictures based on other pictures. In this case, she had taken these pictures of New York, and decided to recreate the image. She talked about how she has a hard time incorporating color into her paintings, but she liked the effect of black and white to add emphasis to the New York skylight. When I look at her series of paintings, I see art. These are aesthetically pleasing to me. Kate Varney has a bit of a different outlook on painting. She focuses a lot on layering. Her untitled piece here is very well layered and textured, but it is not aesthetically pleasing to me. We have had conversations in class about the "skill" it takes to create paintings like Kate's. For me, I would rather see Marla Olmsteads paintings over Kate's. This just doesn't do anything for me. It looks like she sat at the top of the canvas and poured a can of paint and just let it drip down. I guess when I think of art and paintings, I think of artwork where I see a visual representation and can think of the artists intent.