abstract minimalism acrylic painting feat. orange, blue, cream with green under

Today I spent four hours hurriedly slapping paint onto two canvases in an abstract minimalism class. The conditions weren’t ideal, as the class was packed with students, and so the instructor’s attention was spread pretty thin.

This was very much out of my comfort zone and a great exercise. These canvases really only have 2 layers of color, a base layer followed by contrasting top layer. That is minimal! They were done almost entirely with palette knife, no brushes, and using only a small set of colors – red, yellow, blue, black and white. Texture was emphasized. She had listed “fix all” on the supplies list, but I didn’t know what that was. I sort of suspected it might be wall patch stuff, and so I almost glopped some of the joint compound out of my big bucket into a plastic container to take along, but at the last minute didn’t because I was out of time to deal with the ensuing mess. In retrospect, I should have done it anyway, because I had to settle for a thick undercoat of white gesso (primer) to get some texture going on.

It was fun, but it didn’t shift my world.

One memorable, non-art exercise we did in class was a game to learn everyone’s name. I was surprised how well this worked. Everyone gathered into a circle, not a hand-holdy circle, spread out as much as the space allowed. Then it started with one person, the instructor, who looked around the circle until she locked eye contact with one person chosen randomly. Then she said her own name. The person eye-locked onto then looked around the circle to do the same thing, locking eyes, saying her own name. This goes on for a while until all names have been said at least 3 times. Then the game changes and the person looking around locked eyes with someone whose name she remembered and said that person’s name. That person then did the same thing, looking for someone whose name she remembered and saying that name. This went on for a while. By the end, it was surprising how many names I’d retained. There were probably 20 people.

abstract minimalism acrylic painting feat. yellow, gray with purple under