Of Art Groups and Divas

What a carry on! The art group and the Diva is what I am talking about. It goes like this.

Ivana is our art teacher. Ivana is a Diva. A flambouantly dressed person. A lovely person but a Diva never-the-less. Let me give you a some examples.

A few week ago she had conjunctivitis. She arrived at class wearing a very large pair of sun glasses. "Oh," she says, "I am wearing my shades because I have conjunctivitis and I have to keep my eyes sheltered from the light." Fair enough. No problem.

As each student arrives at he class." Oh I am wearing my shades as I have to shield my eyes from the light." Okay. Fine. But this went on and on to everyone who entered the building. It was becoming a source of amusement.

So to recap if any recap is needed, Ivana has conjunctivitis and has to wear shades indoors. Well after three weeks of being reminded of this temporary affliction and why she was wearing shades; the aforementioned shades suddenly were no longer necessary as Ivana now no longer had conjunctivitis. I'll leave you to fill in the blanks.

Okay. Fair play. We can all put up with that. We all know Ivana and her quirks, so no-one had too much of a problem with the shades. No not at all, just a bit of a giggle.

But…and it's a big BUT, you never know quite what you are doing when Ivana's around. When she is teaching she turns into 'Mega Diva.' That's right. She either deliberately changes her mind …..or else she doesn't know what the hell she is doing. Let me enlighten you. She tells us to do one thing one week and then the next week she has completely changed her mind and tells you to do something else. Usually something entirely different. Which to say is at least somewhat confusing if not outright frustrating.

To illustrate. The lady who sits next to me, Molly I will call her her, was told by Ivana to do a painting of a sunset with dark silhouettes of trees in the foreground. Right. Well Molly started her painting and did a lovely sunset background. Ivana then comes along and tells Molly that it's time to start putting in the silhouetted trees in the foreground. So Molly painted the trees in.

The following week Ivana appears, looks at Molly's painting and says "Oh, you have put the trees in too soon you have ruined it. You will have to scrub the whole painting out, then paint the whole canvas white and start all over again from scratch." OMG.

Anyway between them they tried to scrub the painting and remove the black silhouetted trees. But alas, the trees had other ideas and were not budging. No matter how and with what Ivana and Molly tried tried to get rid of them, the trees simply held their ground and refused to be uprooted as it were.

I have never found out what happened to Molly's canvas which at the end of all the scrubbing and scratching, really was totally ruined. I must remember to ask her when I next go to the class.

And that's not all. Similar things happen to me all the time. One instance is the painting i'm working on at the moment.

Here's how that story goes. I took a few photographs in to class to give myself some inspiration for a new painting. Like the dumb person I can be sometimes, I showed them to Ivana. I did have my mind set on one particular photograph. But Ivana thought that the one I had chosen "may confuse" me. (That was rich). And so she suggested that I do another one. She suggested a seascape with little else in it apart from the sea rushing in between some rocks and a meagre sunset on the distant horizon.

Okay I started it. I had a feeling from the outset that I was in for a bit of a struggle with it. The following week Ivana came around to have a look. "Hmmmm," she said. "Hmmm….you are walking a tightrope with that one. You are going to have to be very careful." Great, I thought. How true Ivana. How you Ivana.

Anyway I'm still working on this picture which does not lend itself very well to being transformed from a photograph to a painting. I have had to alter quite a lot of it, and it is still not how I want it to be. Doh!

It is not just myself and Molly who feel aggrieved by these 'problems'. One lady commented just yesterday "you come in full of the joys of spring and leave depressed." Yes indeed you do.

Painting is supposed to be a relaxing therapeutic pastime, not a source of aggravation and anxiety. Anyway, whatever you are feeling at the time shows in your painting. Therefore it can all go very wrong very easily.

To be fair, teaching art must be difficult, but at least stick to some basic guidelines and let the student get on with their own interpretation of what you have taught them gently guiding them through it as they go along. Changing your mind every week is not learning the students anything in my opinion.

What d'ya say???

FOOTNOTE: The painting illustrated here is one of my first. It's a Swallow Tailed Gull form the Galapagos Islands.