20/02/19 VL Louise Giovanelli, Q&A, tutorial and painting masterclass

I cannot believe I've forgotten to write about Louise until now. I can't remember a lot about the lecture but I did attend her masterclass that happened a couple of weeks afterwards- I think. 

I know that the tutorial I had with her was very good, as was the Q and A after the lecture. She is much easier to talk to than you'd think from how professional she is when presenting her work. 

She understood where I was coming from in trying to find a black that was properly black and my frustrations not succeeding. She got me onto oil paint and explained the need to layer tones to achieve a richer, more velvety black than you would ever be able to buy. 

Notes from the lecture:

<3

Louise likes to challenge herself and push the medium to see what is possible. She used to paint transient objects, paper planes, party poppers, etc. She also uses glazes to convey transparency. 

 By painting these objects she gives them an extension of life, beyond their own. Like a portrait I guess. 

I really admire her skill and talent at painting and it was great to see a painter in, very different from the usual kind of Artist we have on a Wednesday. I am not a painter but I feel like one. I love how colour works next to others, I love texture, I am obsessed with the effects of composition. Even when it's bad,as I like things to be almost balanced -I find the effect of something too heavy on one side quite jarring, it gives me more of a response. In my own work, I aim for balanced as I am striving for comfort. I like to see other people's work when it doesn't have the same safety.     

 My preference for working on lots of projects at once suits painting with oils, as you can't spend too much time on one at once anyway. I can't wait to start properly when I get the chance. 

 This made me rethink how I evaluate Art. She painted like someone explores a 3d material, the focus wasn't on what she painted but rather how. I have never considered this when viewing a painting before. 

This kind of thing, removing the period costume, is genius to me and how she relates to a contemporary viewer. She is so good at what she does but to not rest on those skills but go forward and explore what she can achieve and at times make a point, so cool. 

 The show with the lighting was really important to me and influenced how I displayed my stuff in the Bridewell. As soon as I saw the pictures of the darkness she'd created in that room by painting it black and then making custom lights for each of her works I painted my studio black and I began thinking of light.

This is beautiful, how she has looked at this work and reframed it. 

 The residency stuff was very interesting, she was full of helpful, practical advice about how to go about applying for these things.

This glaze over the tiled floor showed me how perfect oils could be for me, in the pursuit of applying a grey filter/gauze over my work to replicate my dreams. After we'd been to the Tate to see the Leger exhibition I went about and saw this and thought that it proved grey and white are just as good at hiding and obscuring as black is. 

She used glazes to create paintings I haven't seen anything similar to, using a limited palette. 

Her scraping away of these lines and drawing into the work inspired me to use my scalpel and cut back the paint layers rather than to just sand them back. 

Even though in my tutorial with her she did say that by itself, without revealing the layers underneath there was enough context to justify it without editing. She told me that if you can want to do something do research because if you can refer to another artist who has done similar you will be met with less resistance. 

Notes from the Masterclass