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LONG post. My WV painting trip report.

Posted by loosi at home (aka loosilu2) Aug 31 '13, 19:05
Just got back from WV, where I spent the whole week at an art workshop. It's in a tiny mountain town called Thomas, basically in the middle of nowhere. The town has three parallel streets on a hillside, overlooking a river. The lowest street is East Avenue, and it is the westernmost street. Welcome to WV. The street is made up of live music bars, coffee shops, art studios, a general store that's open three days a week, a deli that doesn't serve sandwiches, you get the picture.

I've never been on a painting trip before, and I had a BLAST. There were four teachers and about 15 students. I've known three of the teachers for a long time, and they are my favorite. They are all painters. Danni Dawson is a famous portrait painter; Mike Francis, her husband, is well known for his cityscapes; Kurt Schwarz is my age, he paints everything, and we are good friends. The fourth guy, Paul Lucchesi, is a 50 year old Jewish/Italian guy from New York, who lives in that little town, and he is BRILLIANT sculptor. I didn't meet him until this week. I also knew about 4 of the other students.

Going in, I expected to go outside with Mike and do plein air most of the time, since it's gorgeous out there. I brought about 20 prepped canvasses, as well as two sets of paint (indoors and outdoors). I thought I'd crank out loads of stuff and maybe paint a figure if I got tired of the sun.

We spent Monday morning casing out the landscape. I walked along the dirt road next to the river for an hour and a half, taking pictures. This earned me a vicious sunburn on my neck and arms, complete with blisters. It didn't actually hurt that much, but I was able to leverage it for sympathy. After that, I had to spend the next two days indoors. And then there was rain. End result, no landscapes at all. I can still work from the pictures if I want.

What did happen is I spent 2.5 completely uninterrupted days in the dilapidated 3rd floor ex-ballet studio, painting a portrait of our gorgeous model. I've never been able to do that before, and it came out beautiful. We were sharing the model with sculptors, which was a new experience. we had to learn not to get in each other's way. And then a funny thing happened. Paul did a demo of how to sculpt figures. It was like a Zen experience. He is a funny, manic little guy with a crazy girlfriend, living in this tiny town, and by God, this guy is a genius. He is famous for a reason. I was mesmerized. Heather, the model, told me she saw me set up to paint a second picture, then Paul did his demo, and I was like, "um, is it ok if I try that?"

I spent the next 2.5 days doing my first figure sculpture, and it was like an epiphany. All of a sudden, I drew down to the very depths of 5 years of studying anatomy. Paul showed me how to create the basic figure (keep it skinny at first, then add clay). I then worked out, by feel, how to add the muscles and flesh where it should be. It was my first sculpture, but I held my own with the more experienced people. It was weird at first, but felt natural. I had no idea.

I am more ridiculously proud of this little figure than I have been of any painting I've done in years. Sculpting is like birthing little people.

So. Other than that, we got drunk twice a day. Once at lunch (2-3 hour long affairs, incredible Italian and French food cooked by Danni, Paul, and Kurt). I found my way into the kitchen every day, washing lettuce or chopping garlic while swilling red wine. Every night we hit a couple of different bars and drank more. and we went to some great live music shows too.

Our model, Heather, hooked us up with genuine WV moonshine, made by her dad's friend. I have two mason jars of it sitting in my liquor cabinet right now. She says if we want more we can make arrangements. I could become an honest to god bootlegger.

in conclusion, this was the best week ever.

after a shitty summer, thank you , Jesus.

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