BU First Month

Events are moving too quickly to post everything from the graduate school program on the blog. Here are highlights. The photographs are snapshots, hand held, daylight.

The city paintings are influenced in part by recently reading Don DeLillo’s White Noise. The story concerned an “airborne toxic event” hovering over Somerville, Mass, circa 1985. The next series of paintings use only black and white. The white is an unbleached titanium, a warmer color than titanium white. The color variations are due to the camera adjusting to light; it’s all the same paint.

The two figures are from different drawing classes. The torn paper collage was made from drawings everyone in class made, tore up, and glued. All the torn pieces were put in a pile. Then we selected a handful to tear again to make our collage figures. This is one of many exercises ostensibly to teach us to be less precious or protective of our work and encourage generosity towards others. The pencil nude was the fourth session of three hours each of the same pose. Finally got that left leg to turn.

I was loaned a postcard of a painting by the Spanish realist Tomas Yepes, c. 1595–1674. First step to understanding a painting is to draw it.

We are doing Visual Critiques each week in Painting Seminar, the only class all first-year MFA candidates have together. Two people choose one of their paintings to hang in the common room. The rest of the group does a piece in response. Each person responds visually with any materials and approach they choose. The result helps the person doing the response piece to see the original work. It helps the original maker see their work in a new way.

The acrylic painting on paper is my response to an abstract oil painting. This process is also interesting because many of us end up working at the same time in a communal party with a lot of talking. So far it’s been a fun process and much better than verbal critiques.

ABOVE: Traffic Rain, oil on linen panel, 10 x 8 inches ( 25 x 20 cm), 2011