You are cordially invited to attend the opening of the exhibition Paintings by Jeni Caruana Inaugurated by Marquis Nicholas De Piro at 7.30pm on Wednesday 7th May 2014 at the ‘La Vittoria Band Club’ (in front of the Mellieħa Parish Church) 23, Misrah il-Parroċċa, Mellieħa Please click here to see the collection of paintings I will be exhibiting
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First of all - Happy Easter everyone! I hope that it has been a peaceful holiday surrounded by good company and plenty of chocolate!! At the moment Malta is in full bursting bloom, with spring flowers seeming to grow as quickly and abundantly as they possibly can in every nook and cranny. The fields are green and overflowing with produce, tall with wheat and corn, clover and wild grasses, all dotted with bright red poppies and yellow 'Ingliza' (sorrel).
This year has inspired me just the same, and so - you have heard this here first! - I will be having an exhibition of recent paintings at the 'La Vittoria' Band Club (opposite the parish church) in Mellieha in May. It will open officially on May 7th at 7.30pm and I would love it if you could be there. I will be saving trees this year and not sending printed invitations at all, so please, just come if you can. My classes continue, Friday mornings in the delightful (and flourishing) gardens of Villa Bologna in Attard, and the Saturday Morning Drawing Club in my studio in Manikata. Come and join in the fun!
I am a Flat-Earther when it comes to drawing.... we have to draw on two dimensional surfaces so how can anything really be three dimensional in our drawings? Drawing itself is an illusion; there are no lines around things, only changes in colour or tone or distance, so we have to invent marks to show those changes. We capture optical illusions in our lines; objects don’t really become smaller as they move away from us, they only appear to. This makes no sense to our beleaguered ‘left brains’ which will battle heroically to make things look the way they ‘should’. Struggling with perspective for hours and not knowing why the results still look so wrong is every student’s nightmare. Being shown how to construct disappearing perspective lines which meet on the horizon/eyeline makes the left brain happy, but it’s often hard to apply this accurately when faced with a real life, three dimensional subject. Lines tend to tilt in the completely opposite direction, we invent things we can’t see at all, and it just gets totally frustrating. There is a much easier way; drawing three-dimensional space so that it appears ‘real’ is almost simple if you tell yourself that the world is flat. You have to prove this first, so that your left brain will give up trying to ‘help’ you. Hold up a piece of string with a weight on the end of it – a plumbline – so that you can see past it to, say, a cup on a table beyond it. Close one eye and see that the cup ‘touches’ the string in space. Now close the other eye instead and see how much the cup appears to have moved! We humans have brilliant binocular vision with our two eyes, which gives us our sense of depth and distance. In this case though, we need one view, so close one eye and see the cup ‘touching’ the string. Now look down the string a little and see that the closest edge of the table ‘touches’ the string too, look down further and you will see the floor, the table legs perhaps – all ‘touching’ the string. Look up the string and you will see the further edge of the table and whatever else is in your view – a window perhaps, the view outside, miles down the road, all will ‘touch’ the string too!
This gives you not only a very useful tool to judge perspective with – it also gives you the greatest gift of all – you now LOOK LIKE AN ARTIST. Do this with enough conviction (you don’t actually need to draw anything at all) and everyone will think you know exactly what you are doing. Result!
After all the left and right brain theory about the opposing effects of logic and creativity (see my last blog post) have gone over your head :-), here is what I have concluded; that drawing is actually better if you can do it using no brain at all!! This takes a bit of practice, because the only way to draw without processing is to have complete confidence in your technique and total disregard for the end result. It’s only paper, after all. When I was at college I wanted to draw figures in contorted positions as part of a project I was doing. It was to be a mobile hanging and I needed them to have their arms and legs arranged so that I could cut out the figures and then hook them onto each other. My friends weren’t that accommodating (or flexible) ...... I came up with the idea of drawing moving figures very quickly, and then using them as the basis for my drawings. I had the brilliant idea of drawing footballers on the TV, and spent hours doing just that. Along with the anatomy classes at college and my continuing love for working from live models, I now find that I can work really quickly as long as I manage to switch off and just let it happen. The trick is to watch the figure for a while until you have a feeling for the way they are moving – sometimes I really feel that I am dancing the flamenco, or playing the guitar (I can’t do either) – and so the drawing kind of comes from the inside out. Once I have that connection, I can take a mental snapshot and then draw it out before it fades, not looking back until I have finished. I am very lucky to be allowed to draw and paint at all sorts of wonderful events and venues in Malta. Every year I set up my easel at the Malta Jazz Festival in mid-July and just paint non-stop for three evenings. I can also go along to the Malta Arts Festival dance, music and folk-singing shows. The weather is perfect for outdoor performances and the settings are spectacular. Last week I was asked if I would like to paint a lovely performance “Mu-Danzas Boleras” at the prestigious Manoel Theatre in Valletta. Would I! I was given a box next to the stage – which I covered in plastic sheeting and had some real fun drawing with watercolour and ink. I am asked sometimes why I don’t make life easier for myself and just draw from photographs – but where would the challenge or fun be in that? The end results might be more realistic perhaps, but they would not have the sense of movement and energy that I revel in. All I have to remember to do is disengage my brain (it’s getting easier with age) because otherwise I get in my own way and can’t draw a thing. And then afterwards I have to stop myself from trying to ‘correct’ them, as that tends to deflate them, and me, too.
I have to admit that sometimes I have a passing fit of nerves as I stand, brush in hand, thinking “you’ve done it again, set yourself up for a really public embarrassment”. But I take a deep breath and remind myself of the Buddhist teaching “If you never get to know the nature of fear, you will never know fearlessness” and Albert Einstein’s “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new” All children are born with an urge to make marks, to sing, dance and generally express themselves individually. If you ask any small child if they can draw or paint and they will say ‘yes’ and usually show you – so what happens? Why do we lose that confidence in our ability? It seems to be an inborn urge to make marks and draw what we see around us. Perhaps that helps us to connect to our environment and make sense of it..... Drawing as a form of communication and connection goes right back to our human roots. Our self awareness, creativity and inventiveness has made us the most powerful animal on earth. Little children begin by scribbling (on everything!) until they – miraculously! – form a circle. Apparently young chimps love to scribble as well, and some even manage to make a circle too, but they do not take the symbol any further. Human children put dots and lines inside that circle - and suddenly it represents a face, usually Mummy’s, or the face of their primary carer. That face is the most important feature of their world and when it appears they know that they are safe and will be cared for. They draw that circular image over and over again, beginning to add other people in their world, and adding stick legs because the faces move, and stick arms and fingers because the faces do things with them. One of my favourite drawings created by one of my children when they were tiny was a drawing of us all as a family; I was the only one with fingers though. In her world it seemed that I was the only one that did anything! Little children are sponges, and will happily copy other people’s images to complement their own, so they are shown how to draw a simple house, a tree, a bird. They copy each other’s images and symbols too, so they often look quite similar the world over. An exercise I give my students is to try and draw a simple landscape as they think they would have at the age of about five. The first thing we notice is how HAPPY it makes us feel! Then we see how similar they often are, and one thing that I love is that Maltese students will usually draw little houses with pointed roofs and chimneys.... there is no such thing in typical Maltese architecture! I wonder how children would draw if they were not shown anything at all? We had a Spanish au pair girl when I was very small and she used to draw little Princesses for me. They all looked the same and I loved them. I wonder if that sparked my fascination with drawing the human figure? I drew these at a live Flamenco event last summer - I had to be fast! Children’s drawings naturally develop to become more rounded and sophisticated, and to reflect what the child is most interested in; cars, boats, animals, etc. At some stage though, a dissatisfaction sets in as they try to draw more realistically and find that nobody can help them to do that. They might be able to draw one or two things reasonably well, but other subjects will just frustrate them. Some children find drawing and thinking creatively easier than others, but most find it really difficult and are easily put off by negative comments and accept the label of ‘unable to draw’. They fall back on childhood symbols such as stick men and cauliflower trees whenever they are asked to draw. The reason behind most people’s frustration with not being able to draw realistically is usually the same one; it is because they have been attempting to learn to draw in a logical way, and drawing is not a logical process. It is a creative one, and involves learning to ‘see’ the world in a completely different way before we can draw it. It is the way that an artist sees, and is not taught in classes unless the teacher is not only able to see that way, but also able to explain and demonstrate it. We have to be able to draw exactly what is in front of our eyes, without processing it in any logical way. Some children are able to naturally see this way already, but more of that next time... . Meanwhile, I am starting another series of drawing classes on Saturday afternoons in Manikata next Saturday, 18th January - click below to contact me ! I am happy to offer you a half-price SALE on all my prints! They are all printed using the best digital technology and show every detail of texture and brushstroke as clearly as the original. Each image is approximately 42 x 30 cms. Top quality inks and acid free 250gsm hammered card make each one a very special record of the original painting. I have several different collections of prints, this first one consists of eight of my paintings created on-site at the Malta Jazz Festival every year. I use acylics on gesso tinted paper and paint on the spot to capture the atmosphere and excitement of this great annual event under the stars. This one, "Aviahai Cohen Trio" was painted at the 2011 Jazz festival. To see the rest of the series please click HERE For my last solo exhibition in May 2013 I created a set of six prints of local Maltese landscapes. Most of the paintings feature the 'Girna' , or small stone farmer's huts, which dot the landscape in the North of Malta. This one is called "Girna, Kennedy Grove" and the original was painted in watercolours. To see all six, please click HERE I also have a lovely range of prints made from paintings I painted on site at various of the famous prehistoric Temples in Malta. Some were created in the Hypogeum, the unique underground Temple, and others are of curled naked women, following the legends of sleeping oracles who spent nights down there to have visionary dreams. To see the range of prints please click HERE This one is called "Portal" and was painted in Ta'Hagrat Temple in Mgarr. I hope that you find at least one that you like and make the most of this offer!
Meanwhile, here's to 2014, may all our dreams come true! Best wishes, Jeni :-) |
Jeni Caruana I love to paint - and draw - and help others to discover their creative side too..... Be the first to see my latest work and hear of new classes by adding your email address below. Thank you! Categories
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