Fine Art Critique

Paul Peel- After the bath

Art word of the week..


Balance


Balance is something that is very important when it come to art because you want to ensure that as an artist you use the positive and negative space.  There are two different types of balance that can be seen through a piece of art work, the two types are symmetrical and asymmetrical.  The type of balance that can be seen from the piece above is symmetrical.  Both sides of the painting are equal with one another, there does not appear to have one side that is heavy than the other.  By studying the painting I was able to see that the artist try to ensure that the colours that he used would be able to balance each other out.  Balance is a very important aspect when it comes to painting and art it ensure that all the space that we are provided with will be used.    


A little bit about this piece....


Artist: Paul Peel
Born: London, Canada West (now Ontario), 1860; 
Died: Paris, France, 1892
Name of Painting: After the bath
Date Completed: 1890
Type of Painting: Oil on Canvas
Fact: It was a gift of the government of the Province of Ontario in 1972


My thoughts on After the bath....


What is going on in the work of art?
My initial reaction to this piece was warmth, cold, love, and childhood.  I enjoy this work because it reminded me of my childhood with my family up at my cottage on a cold winters night by the fire.  It may also be because I am an Early Childhood Education student and I love pictures that have children in them because they always to me look so innocence, happy and just a peace with the world around them.  I also enjoy this painting because I love the colours that were used to create the warmth from the fire.  The images that I recognize within this artwork  are the fireplace, couch, chair, shoes, the rug the children are standing and sitting on.  The associations that I make with these images are a cold winters night standing by the fire to get warm.  They do relate to other things outside of art, because most children to have fireplaces and will stand by them to get warm.  This piece of artwork does remind me of my childhood in a sense that I feel as if when I was younger I would stand by the fireplace after coming inside to get warm again with my brother, and we would stay there and drink hot chocolate and watch movies with my parents.

What do you see that makes you say that?


The materials that have been used are oil paints on a canvas.  I am familiar with the media because I have taken art course in my past education that allowed my to use different types of paints. The associations that I make with these materials is thickness, and different types of textures within the painting because of the way the artist used his materials.  My senses responded with excitement and wonderment.  There is an element of colour that draws me to this piece, the colour's just seem so warm and inviting that makes me just want to curl up and sit by my own fireplace as well!  If I were to touch the work I would imagine that it would feel bumpy because of the different types of strokes that were used to create it.  The piece does evoke a smell, one that is the smell of the wood burning.  The sound that I can hear from this piece is the crackling of the fire and the laughter of the children.  The artistic process the artist has used to create the work was that Paul Peel, would use his children in some of his pieces, Paul even studied children,which he would paint children in his pieces of work.  I can not imagine the process of creating this piece of work, as it is very large and has a lot of little details that Paul Peel, paid attention to.  The work was crafted by hand, as it was an oil painting completed on a canvas.  I would imagine that this piece of work took a very long to time complete, my estimate would be somewhere from one-two years.  

What more can we find?


This piece was completed by Paul Peel, who was a Canadian artist, born in Ontario.  This painting won a medal at the prestigious annual art exhibition in Paris.  The name of the painting is After the Bath.  The overall theme of paintings in this room was a autumn day, or spring day.  There was also lots of children in the some of the paintings that were in the room.  My initial reaction has not changed after I have discussed this piece with others.  After I have returned to the piece my reaction did not change over the length of time that I was away from the painting.


For Educators:


Introducing children to the different types of artwork can allow for them to become aware of the different types of art there is in the world. You could also take them to your local art gallery, or even to the AGO, who doesn't love a field trip! You could even allow the children to create their own masterpiece and then after they are done, they can talk about it to the class.

My Instant Sculpture

My sculpture is very personal; for years my subjects were family and close, close friends.

-Gloria Swanson 

Art Word of the Week:

Line

This sculpture contains all different lengths of lines and weight of lines. The lines that were used for the grass are short and long in some areas.  Where as the tree trunk, is is a bit longer than the others that were used.  There are curvy lines used to make the tree bushy.  The lines that were used to make the house are both short and long lines that form a square and a triangle to make the roof, and then a smaller square to make the door.  As for the sun, that contains lines that are short.  As it can be seen through my sculpture, lines can take on many different uses and sizes, texture etc, to make a master piece!

My sculpture is something that is very important to me, which would be my home, it's a place where I always feel safe.  The sculpture shows different kinds of texture, smooth and bumpy, that is from the magazine paper that was used to make this sculpture.  The reason why I chose to make this sculpture was because when I was younger this would be my favourite type of picture to draw because I loved the outside, I would be outside till the street lights came on.  Home is a place where you are able to feel the warmth of the love from the people inside, yet you still have a place of your own that you know is just your space.  Having a place where it can allow you to be creative and create your own sculpture will allow you grow and just have fun with whatever you can find around your house, after all my sculpture was just made out of magazine pages!  The magazine pages also represent that nothing is the same when it comes to creativity or perfect, everything has flaws and its up to you to see past the flaws and be able to see the work of art that has be created around us.

For Educators:


Who doesn't love creating something out of the items you can find around your house?!?! This can allow for the children to be creative with what they use to make their sculpture.  This allows the children to think outside of the box and teaches them to recycle items they use.

What does Creativity mean to me.....

“Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things, because we’re curious… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.” — Walt Disney

It can be anything you want it to be

Day Dreaming

 Expressing yourself

The sky is the limit

Nothing is ever the same

       

Loving what you do

Creativity:


To me creativity is just what the pictures above show and the sayings that I have placed under them.  One thing that I do to be creative is ever since I was young I would always change my room around because I would just get bored of the way it was set up and needed a change.  I also really love doing collages with my photos and then display them around my room so that I can look at them everyday.  Creativity is knowing that its okay to be silly and laugh whenever you get the chance to.  The ocean to me is just a place of endless dreams and possibilities with no end.  Creativity shows me that anything is possible 

A sea of possibilities 

Jell-o eating with my cousins

During the summer I go up to my cottage with my whole family and we do a family games day, even my grandparents compete in the games as well.  We are all divided into teams and compete for prizes; one of the games was to eat jell-o with no hands.  We all get together and plan out the games that we want to use that let me say some of them are very creative. It was a very messy game to say the least. 

A list of the games

This is the list of the games that my family had come up with for our family games day.  As you can see the name of the games are very unique and creative, which was exactly what the games were.  All the games created memories that my cousins and I will have for the rest of our lives and each year that we get together we remember the games and talk about doing them each summer.  It was a fun way to spend a summer day with the family and there were a lot of laughs along the way.   




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