Inspiration Strikes

There is a cast relief sculpture which I have been working on for a while now. The piece emerged by accident and was spurred to fruition by sheer visual interest. It is a cast of my left arm up until the wrist. It is completely white, except for some off color pieces of plaster gauze which dried a different shade of white than the rest. It is a very cool looking piece. While I did not know what it needed to be finished except for maybe a coat of acrylic paint to even out the coloration, the artwork needed a context. I found one: The story of Sgt. Gary Yoakam. Sgt Yoakam from Ohio lost his left hand in a rocket propelled grenade attack while on patrol with Charlie Company, 3rd Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. While I am certain that there are many other injuries where soldiers have lost a left hand, Sgt Yoakam's story is the one I know, and the context which brings work of art to life.

Private Art Lessons....

Recently a friend of the family had asked me to do a private lesson with his 9 year old daughter since she had shown some interest in the arts. I thought it would be an interesting idea so I went along with it. The little girl was really sweet and very smart. However the experience was a little marred by her dad. He had a preconceived notion of what his daughter should paint and strong-armed the lesson more than I think I should have allowed. However I did not want to sour the relationship my father has with him. He wanted maybe too much at once from an hour and a half of painting. He wanted a landscape painting to put up in his house painted by his daughter, which seemed to be the more pressing goal for him, then getting his daughter interested in the arts. I set out my paints and all the necessary materials ahead of time for the lesson, which included an image which I thought was complex enough and interesting enough to challenge the girl. An Arthur Carles painting "An Actress as Cleopatra". We ended up digging through a Vincent Van Gogh book of my father's finding something which both the girls and her father agreed upon. A Still Life with Sunflowers. The little girl matched up all the colors and I showed her how to mix different acrylic paints to get different tones. She was really smart and more focused than some of the students I teach through the after-school program. It was a pretty cool experience overall. Her painting looked pretty good as far as color matching and technique went. I'm sure that my pushing her to do just a little bit more and more certainly helped the painting look as good as it did. She told me she would certainly love to do more painting in the future. Ofcourse she is still at the age when she will try anything without the proverbial defeatist "but I'm no good at that" which plagues most youngn's.