Katherine Da Silva Art Pages
- May 27, 2016
- 3 min read
Well I suppose it is a right thing to open up about everything I have encountered since art school by way of treading the creative path. When I was of a school age, my favorite classes were all about communication skills: English language; French; art; and anything just anything that was about humanities subject wise. I was extremely lucky to have studied at least to G.C.E. level the subject of classics. In particular our class studied the ancient Greek culture in every aspect. Seeing decorative subjects painted onto the side of vases, and carved into stone on the sides of buildings, linked too to my own interpretations of art and broadened my knowledge of the world I then lived in. I come from Southampton in Hampshire, England. Our teacher of classics then was a Mrs Tuckwell, who also took the whole class on a 'London' trip, and to see too the play of Oedipus the King performed by Bradfield School, within their own grounds performed in the original Greek text. They had at that particular school a mock/neo built amphitheater as the ancient Greek's themselves would have created for their entertainments, and to which many theaters are designed essentially even now with tiered seating to enable everyone an equal viewing of the stage. It seems wonderful even now and so fortuitous that our class had been given the ancient Greeks. My sister's class studied ancient Rome! The Greeks celebrated their own cultural delights, such as sports and games and religious festivals. All of the subject of which is seen on the sides of their vases and in sculptures carved into the decorative friezes around their temple buildings. I had seen the Elgin marbles in the British Museum on one of the many trips, and delighted in learning the elements of architecture. In studying life drawing at art school I too then took part in the measuring and proportional drawing of the human body. Margaret Meakes, of Southampton School of art, took a group of sixth form students every Wednesday afternoon, in the instruction on the 'how to draw the human body' element of our training. It was indeed very traditional in essence to measure by sight and the use of a pencil the proportions of a body translated onto paper a two dimensional surface. There were also completely free times when we were told not to draw a line at all, but to feel the form of the model by just using shade, or the side of the pencil so that the images was just a shimmer of tone on the surface of the paper. My Wednesday afternoons were a time to meet other students from different colleges around Southampton. And as typical teenagers then, who inevitably romanced on occasions about their futures, we engaged in conversations and planning and forward thinking. I remember Timothy Ellis or Tim, as I use to call him then, bespectacled and charming, but, wonderfully, now can see him enjoying success with his art career in the way that we all hoped would be the result for our endeavor then. If life were a race, and a hurdling race at that, then, all of the aspiring ones from my class probably deserve medals for trying by now! I reflect often about the subject of art and time and time again, there is opportunity to do what is inevitable if you reach a stalemate. You reflect look back and recharge yourself by focusing on what works both in your own work and other artists. I am glad that especially during the years I studied I took time to go to galleries and look at art. I remember the Ger Van Elk in the Serpentine. I remember because it was a combination of image and use of space in a canvas that encompassed use of the human figure and conceptual ideas with graphic angular lines and suggested movement. So what makes a good successful image, one that captures it's audience, one that stands out above the other pieces in an exhibition for example? Picasso's chunky paintings of people can be seen from the other side of a gallery space in the Tate. I enjoy art I can engage with, and it is in it's physical proportionality that some of that experience is encountered.
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