I had the opportunity to speak to a freshman painting studio at School of Visual Arts last week, which is taught by the amazing artist Maura Sheehan (click here to see some of her work).
I had the best time, it was a great group of people, and it made me so nostalgic for art school! I always say that if I could do anything for the rest of my life, I would just go to art school and hang in the painting studio all day. Of course when I told the students this, they looked at me like I was crazy, since they are so ready just to start their lives and careers, as I was too back then.
I just wanted to tell them about all the different things they could do as artists. When I was a student, I was like…what am I going to do when I graduate?? But there are so many things you can do…fashion…textiles…graphic design…product design…basically I told them that the world is their oyster! They were great, and I would love to do this again sometime.
I also talked to them about perseverance, which happens to be something I am dealing with right now! Sometimes you spend a day painting and nothing comes out right and you say to yourself, ‘well that was a waste of a day’. This aspect of being an artist never changes, whether you’re a student or you’ve been painting forever. You always want to rework things and nothing ever seems finished. I worked on this yesterday and I was like…damn! I should have given her a jade green clutch! A jade green clutch would MAKE this. So then I tried painting her again and the face was just wrong, wrong, wrong. So I think I will try again today to get her right, inspired by what I told the students!