mcauleyhouseartists: Field trip to the VA

Monday, January 9, 2012

Field trip to the VA

Thelma Nancy

PVAC Psychosocial Rehabilitation & Recovery Center.

What a wonderful time I had this morning visiting the Veteran's Wellness Center at the Veteran's Administration Hospital in Providence. I met Todd, a gifted poet, that survived a near fatal car crash. His story of survival of his near death experience was nothing short of a miracle. I'm eager to read his poetry.
I also visited Ron's painting class and the greenhouse.

What a nice program the VA has created for their community. Here's a link to flickr photo album:

http://www.flickr.com//photos/shootonce/sets/72157628800696733/show/

PVAMC Paint Club

Ron , Denise,Ted, and Thelma Nancy

Next stop was the painting class where Ronald Reeves meets weekly with his students. Ron is also an artist here at McAuley House. Watching Ron teach painting is like being in a TV studio with Bob Ross. His students are thoroughly enjoying their classes. Ted and Thelma Nancy are the two of Ron's regular students. They were just great to be around and shared some of their previous art pieces with me. Denise was also very helpful in making it possible for me to photograph the group. The art room is well stocked with painting supplies, ample space, and good lighting!

After I left the Paint Club I stopped at the greenhouse next door, Seeds of Hope,
where I met Melissa, one of the greenhouse attendees. She has also helped develop the meditation garden
along with other volunteer VA workers.

Here is a photo collage of the greenhouse

Great job Ron and VA- PVAC !

Looking forward to visiting again. Thanks everyone! KK

About the Art Program

5 Ways to Grow as an Artist

So how would a Cassatt or a Henri or Picasso approach painting differently than we do today? How might this heartfelt fear of others controlling our painting process impact our self-understanding as artists? Here are five possible answers:

1. Making a successful picture is not the goal. Think of periods, such as childhood, when we grew, our self-understanding changed and we became more of who we are. There was an endless stream of events where we expressed ourselves and slowly began to discover the things that pleased us. As with the sense of freedom characterized above, the entire payoff was growth. The events of life when we grow are the things that happen along the way. Making art should be exactly the same. Paintings are just the series of events or steps we take. Let them go. Keep moving. Or as Henri implored, “Keep living.”

2. The painting process is always a beginning. As soon as the freshness evaporates (we are bored or lost or acquire interest in something else), stop. Do not think in terms of finishing. Picasso lectures eloquently on this. Finish is the death of our work because it means we are painting an expectation or “to be like” and that puts the brakes on painting to see and feel more deeply. Every beginning is a new prompt, a new point of departure. Begin everything. Finish nothing.

3. Ignore non-artist authorities. Juries, the grantors, the gallery, the direction from above are just so many fingers in our pie. All external measures are dangerous because they not only push us to performing, as opposed to creating, but their sense of worth takes over our own. This is precisely what Parisian artists fought against.

4. Get into a prolonged creative process. Have dozens of paintings in your studio that have been abandoned for one reason or another, left in various stages, unfinished but always complete as expressions of who you were at that moment. Work on several paintings simultaneously. You are not making shoes.

5. Furnish the world with your beauty, let the world see, touch and feel who you are. Scary I know. It is so much easier to hide within safe fortresses, the sources of praise and dignity that we can count on by pleasing our audience. This is the dreaded condition called style. We cannot be free to be who we are if we are not always risking being who we are in front of others.