In February/March I took an online painting class at Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia, PA. The class was called BLENDING ABSTRACTION AND REPRESENTATION, and over 5 sessions our class explored the continuum between these two endpoints of a line. This set of classes is a continuation of the previous group with the same teacher and the same group of students.
The class was structured so that we worked on our individual artworks in our home studios while participating in discussions and vewing demonstrations by the teacher. I did quite a bit of work and I’ll be showing them to you over a few posts.
Thanks to my instructor, Lesa Chittenden Lim, and my classmates, for a good experience.
Our class assignment was to choose an emotion and depict it in a totally abstract way. I made some attempts in my sketchbook – and I wasn’t satisfied with them. To me, emotions are not paintable. Things, people, events, that evoke emotions, they are visible and can be depicted. That’s how I see things.
So I decided I would just paint in an abstract manner. My goal was to make nothing recognizable in the picture, just paint. Here is the first in this series.
I found something very satisfying about just letting the painting develop, put colors next to colors, and move to another area of the painting. No planning, just let the story tell itself. It was relaxing when I stopped trying to control things. I liked that.
Claudia McGill and Her Art World 
Oh, I do like these Claudia!…
Thank you. There is a nice relaxing feeling to putting the paint on a surface and being not at all uptight about what it is doing. It only has to look nice and be fun to do.!!!
But you have such a good colour sense!…
Thank you. I do like making the colors fit together.
Lovely work. I really like those lozenge, seed-pod shapes and I also like the way your use of various hues of purple is leading my eye around the painting.
Thank you. It wa fun to do this. I think this is one of the first times I made something totally non-referential and I liked it.
LOVE the colors! And it moves is very, very special! 👏👏♥️👏👏
However you got there, I arrived at the same place! Thank you. I liked making this painting, this kind of thing I haven’t done before without throwing it out or painting over it. I’m thinking of trying another few soon.
Yes!! I hope you do more and show us!! 😁
(And I just saw my other typo – should read: “The way it moves is very, very special!” I’m a terrible typist. 🙄)
I got the gist, and I really appreciate your comments because I’ve been uncertain. I have several more I will be posting, coming up soon.
::runs back:: Whoops! Sorry about the formatting for those italics, I tried to close them immediately following “moves” but it didn’t work. 🤪
Great colors as always. And Robin is right about the movement too. (K)
Thank you. I’m pleasantly surprised by every one’s comments as I felt out to sea with working this way, even though I enjoyed it.
Very beautiful indeed!
Thank you!