Investigating Acrylic Painting

The summer concluded with my brief investigation of blending clay with acrylic painting.

The fall semester begins with my remaining questions about that investigation.  Understanding the medium enough to be able to work with it effectively, regarding expressing an idea, is like with anything going to be difficult because my vision exceeds my skill at working with the medium.

Even though I've sat through a number of classes with Professor Wascovich, whose favorite thing to say or talk about (it seemed sometimes) was the fact that one really needed to make 10,000 instances of a thing in order to master it.  Whether or not he meant that literally is beside the point.   I agree that one cannot effectively decide whether they should continue to work with a method or material with only a few attempts.  At least, perhaps not on the basis of whether their initial studies were successful or not.   The results are not likely to be adequate for making such a decision.

However, this being grad school, I think I have to bring something else into the decision making process (or perhaps a few additional factors for the purpose of decision making).  For me at least one thing is a certain resonance.   I'm looking for a resonance at a meta-physical level.   To some degree lack of familiarity is a barrier to that resonance; a barrier that might become more permeable if I gave it some time...but again, this is grad school and I do not have a couple of years to give over to pure exploration. 

I'm looking at materials and methodologies that I connect with more immediately.  I am looking for a medium that my hands and mind seem to want to work with, and my heart almost immediately feels inclined to want to continue to experience.    At this point, acrylic is not it.    However, I am not leaving it behind.  I want to see what the blending of a 3-D form, and the 2-D painting look like and what kind of emotion comes from the initial pieces that I produce.   Perhaps over winter break.

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