What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/1161131
SEPTEMBER 1-7, 2019 WHAT'S UP! 9 As this steel economy collapsed, I moved south near Athens, Ga. Here my young family and I lived mostly off-grid, renting an old tenant farmhouse without plumbing and heating only with wood cut from the land. Living like this brought you close to all the elements of nature. It was a large piece of acreage that backed up close to the University of Georgia School of Forest Resources research property called Whitehall Forest. I was hired there as a forestry technician, working a number of years while I also attended graduate school at UGA for art. This experience provided a practical scientific understanding of the environment that I blended with my more poetic spiritual view on nature. I feel it gave me more insight into the landscape that I seek to portray. Q. You say you work best when you've been in a location. What does that experience give you that a photo or your imagination could not? A. When you work on site, all of your senses are exposed to the place you are at. You can hear the crows calling as they fly overhead, helping to define the depth of the space you are in. You feel the temperature of the time of day on your skin. You can smell the rain as a storm cloud approaches. It all heightens the total experience beyond just sight. Everything is in motion, and it forces you to act quickly as an artist, filtering and retaining the more essential characteristics of the location. It also provides additional information that can feed your imagination as you plan your design for a studio-made piece. A photo can give you some information but is never enough on its own for me. Courtesy Image Above Brown Springs Oil by David Mudrinich Courtesy Image "Robins" Pastel by David Mudrinich Courtesy Image "Bluff Edge" Oil by David Mudrinich Q. Talk, please, about the variety of media you work in — and why? A. The works in this exhibit are created with either oil paint, pastel or conte crayon. I also work in charcoal, graphite, ink, watercolor and acrylic. Each medium has its own unique physical characteristics, and I like the challenge of working with that range. Watercolor and acrylic paint work well for me when I am doing studies on site. I often walk some distance, and they are a little more durable for the hike. Pastel is the more recent material that I have come to use. When I am pressed for time with my teaching schedule, I can just pick up a color stick, draw for whatever length of time I have, stop and not have to deal with any excess prep or cleanup. Working with a variety of media also allows me to offer a more enhanced experience to my students that I have in the classroom. Q. Beehives. Why beehives? A. The farm next to me has beehives that I see every day. I guess it was just the repetition of those boxes and how they were placed within the landscape that first intrigued me. As pollinators I knew that bees were essential for my garden and for the planet at large. But as I continued to study them, more relationships became revealed. Bees and their hives have been symbolic since ancient times and in many cultures. Because of their sudden appearance after being dormant, they have often become symbols of death and rebirth. As I come across different apiaries, they are sometimes found at abandoned locations such as a farm, home or school. These hives seem to symbolize a regeneration of purpose, giving new life to what was once an active place. Their configuration on the land can also resemble a ritual- like setting, like a calendar or sundial measuring time. I like to roll ideas like this around in my head as I draw. It keeps me motivated.