jancschindler

o/c 20″ x 20″

 These paintings are recognizable as faces but at the same time are paintings of line, color, shape, gesture and brushstrokes. I am not sure the blue shape works in the painting on the left but that is the reason why I left it that way. The face on the right seems a bit more representational so I blurred the hair/head with the background.  I do like how that works. I found photos of some non traditional poses for portraits to help with the overall idea of painting vs. image.

When I taught art appreciation one of the first images I used was Magritte’s The Treachery of Images. Most of the students did not understand the “this is not a pipe” but a painting idea. I explained that it summed up one of the concerns of the 20th C. and went on to talk about representational vs. non representational vs. abstract etc. etc.   Something that seems so obvious to me was daunting for them to grasp, the class being the first encounter for many of them with ART. I’d like to think some of them began to understand  it in the end.