Choose one of the following prompts:
- Expose Yourself to Art! What has been your exposure to visual art? Has it been primarily from your family? School? Social activities? Personal explorations? Do you make art? If so, what kind? What is the medium you use? What kind of style is it? Who is your audience? If you haven’t made any art, have you ever wanted to? What kind?
- A Definition of Art Do you agree with the definition for ‘art’ as it is explained in the textbook? Why or why not? Can you add to the definition? Is your definition coming from a subjective or objective perspective?
The Task:
- Identify which prompt you selected. (5 points)
- Compose a written response to the prompt. Be thorough and address each point or question in the selection. You can choose to do this as an essay or use a question/answer format. (15 points)
- Your response must be at least 150 words. (5 points)
Prompt: “Expose Yourself to Art!”
When I was young, my mom enrolled me into art classes till I completed my third grade. I remember I really enjoy how my art teacher Ms. Ling Ling-Ling (yes, her name really rhymes like that, three different Chinese characters with the exact same pronunciation) taught me to use different green color crayon dots to draw trees and my early exposure to watercolor painting. The art class stopped after that, due to heavy academic work. I still love art and I remember I used a pencil to sketch my stepfather and gained a lot of praise when showing it to our family friend when I was in middle school. After my middle school, I wanted to study Mechanical Engineering because I was attracted by the engineering drawing homework one of my best friends was constantly working on. He was two years older than me and studied Mechanical Engineering in a junior engineering college at that time. I want to draw. However, his father suggested that I study software engineering, claiming that field is a better choice. I listened to him and became a software engineer. I am happy but still long to learn about drawing. When I study Computer Science in Northeastern University at Boston, I take courses in Computer Graphics and Image Processing, hoping I can one day work on a job that utilizes my computer science talents to produce artworks. Somehow that did not happen to me. I worked on other kinds of software development jobs the next thirty years but never involved in a project related to arts. Several times I try to pick up brushes to paint watercolor during my vacation but quickly abandon due to busy family duty and work schedule.
In the spring 2018, I joined a one Sunday afternoon introduction to watercolor class hosted by the Visual Art Ministry in our local church, Peninsula Bible Church in Cupertino. The teacher was nice and taught us some very basic watercolor skills and gave us some simple tips such as the need to use very thick and heavy paper, use a lot of water and use less paint, always wait for the paint to dry before painting the next strokes, etc. I took another Introduction to Acrylic day class the month after. I decided to paint portraits for my stepfather, who was 96 years old and lives in Shanghai, China. I brought the two portraits to show him I love him the month after and one month later he passed away, knowing how deeply I appreciate his love and love him. I told the story and showed the image of these two portraits to the old lady who led the Visual Art Ministry at church. She encouraged me to enter two portraits to the visual art “Body of Life” exhibit and I did with also one of my watercolor self-portraits.
That changed my life! After that, I start to render portraits for my loved ones and give them as gifts to show my love. I painted them mostly by watercolor, and Acrylic. One time I painted my mom with coffee on paper. I started to paint my son, my daughter, my wife, my mom, my dog, my uncle, and mostly myself. I painted portraits of my retired colleagues and gave that to them as their retirement gift. Recently, after learning from the ARTS 4B Intermediate Drawing class, I started to paint portraits of myself and my friends with Soft Pastel and Collage.
One artist who greatly influenced me is Chuck Close. I learned about him several years ago when I saw two different styles of his giant and impressive portraits in SFMOMA. I research and learn about his handicap and his passion for painting. I adopt his idea that he is painting a “face”, not a “portrait” and believe what I should paint is the face of who I interacted with, not a face of what a public image that the sitter wants the public to view them about.
My goal is to be a good painter for “face” in the next several years. I believe I need to first build up a solid theoretical background of visual arts before I dramatically expand my visual art creation. Therefore, starting summer 2022, I took all the possible Art History I could find in De Anza College. So far, I think I took every class offered in the last five quarters, ARTS 1B, 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, 2G, 2F, 2J, 3TC. I also took the online art courses ARTS 8, 4A, 4B and 12. Taking these courses really help me to know the visual art history much better and help me to learn new ways to view artworks in museums.
Beside the works by Chuck Close, I really love the works by Georgia O’Keeffe, especially a handful of New York City cityscapes she painted that were not well known by others. I also love the works by Lee Krasner, much better than what her husband Jackson Pollock painted. The works by Gustav Klimt also inspire me to think about how to paint the background and midground to level up the subject. I started to travel to New York City and Washington DC to visit many museums and take many pictures from many angles to observe the details of the art making. The collages by Wangechi Mutu exhibited in New Museum New York City last May changed my view of how to combine collage and painting together to create portraits and inspired me to create several collage works recently. During the same trip to New York City, I also viewed the Georgia O’Keeffe “See Takes Time” exhibit in MOMA and that helped me to understand how many different drafts and versions a great artist will work on for the same composition.
I will continue to paint more portraits, most likely more self portraits. I will explore using a wider variety of medium and viewing angles. I would like to adopt O’Keeffe’s big flower approach to paint the face with a “zoom in” composition and only paint part of a face. I will try to better utilize collage in my portraits making.
My Stepfather, 2018, Watercolor on paper
My Stepfather, 2018, Acrylic on paper
My Mom when She Was Young, 2018, Coffee on paper
My Mom and I, 2018, Watercolor on paper
Thanks for sharing your reflection! When we start talking about art we quickly discover that our ideas about what we consider art may differ from the next person. Often our exposure to art is predicated by what our families like and what is available to us. For people who delve into art-making you may have greater exposure but that’s what makes this kind of class extra fun – we get to explore many different ideas of what makes art… It seems that so often in life we have to set aside the things we really would enjoy doing in order to take on the responsibilities which help us to take care of our families, and to provide for everyone in our lives. How wonderful that you have that opportunity to take the watercolor class through your local church. What an incredible experience this became! Oh, I'm so glad that you shared some of your works - these are wonderful! I seldom get to enjoy a student in class who is excited Enough by the materials to really delve deeply into them like you have, and I really appreciate your effort. I hope that you go on and explore advanced courses in the arts. It sounds like you have the opportunity now to do that.