Ljubica Todorovic, Visual Artist

A glimmer, a spark…

December 23, 2011

I am frantically finishing up a last minute framing job for a customer while simultaneously wracking my brain as to what on Earth I am going to paint (Christmas gift) for my sister in law. As I am running back and forth from the frame shop to the studio room, a thought occurs to me… why am I thinking about creating a realistically painted acrylic piece when I should be focusing on what I will enjoy creating? I always start my works with charcoal… and some of my works are just charcoal with nothing else on them, except for gesso, acrylic medium and fixatif to hold it all down. So… that is what I shall do.. a charcoal piece, in the vein of my “Venus & Litter” diptych from 2006.

Merry Winter Holidays and all that jazz to anyone reading my thoughts out there in Internetland.

Focus

December 16, 2011

I was Skyping with a good artist friend of mine who is currently living in New Zealand and she said something that struck a chord with me. She said, “Luba, I think we’ve forgotten why we make art.” She said exactly what I was thinking. I have actually forgotten why I make art… and why I haven’t been making it lately. I’m sitting here thinking to myself, “Why do I like art?” Do I like it because I can make money from it? … no. Do I like it because of the compliments I get? … no. Do I like it because I feel I need to be part of a “group”? … no.

- I like art when it is thought-provoking.
- I like art that is more than what it is.
- I like art when it makes me angry, sad, mad, confused, happy, inquisitive, excited, etc.
- I don’t like art when it is treated as just a commodity by both the artist and the buyer.
- I don’t like art that fails to make me feel something (see emotions above).
- I don’t like art that is only about “trends” (art needs to be ahead of it’s time always).

I enjoy looking at and experiencing all sorts of art… so how do I narrow down what I want to produce? I am particularly enamoured by oil paint, drawing materials and surfaces (canvas, linen, board, paper). I want to make a “thing” – a piece of art which is two dimensional and goes on a wall. It would be nice to have people adopt my art in exchange for cash so that I could buy more supplies needed to explore art further, but I am not interested in building an “art brand”. I want to explore art until the end.

And now, onto studio happenings. So, I am going to be more diligent with keeping a sketchbook and creating compositions on paper before they get turned into big canvases. I have plenty of sketchbooks to fill up, that’s for sure. I should actually scan them and post them here on the blog. I also want to narrow down which sizes I use for paintings. I have lots of different sizes of canvases lurking about in my studio and house… everything from dinky 5×5 standard profile stretchers to awkward sizes like 15×30, 22×30, 24×48 and so on. I’ve got lots of 12×16 stretchers that are blank and ready for some paint… but I don’t want to paint on ANY of these sizes. Here are the sizes I’m interested in:

10×12
12×12
54×60
60×60

… that’s pretty much it. Also I will be keeping sketchbooks of all sizes, but I will try to stick to “almost square” or square. If I want to stick to abstract landscapes I might go into panoramic territory and create paintings on sizes such as 48×96 but I’m not entirely sure that I want to do that. It seems cliche to paint a landscape on a panoramic stretcher.

Teaching Abstract Art

December 13, 2011

People often ask me if I teach art to beginners, and my answer is always yes. I have taught many beginner art classes… including abstract art classes. By far, teaching (and learning about) abstract art is the hardest thing to do. Now, I do not have a problem with teaching it… it is those who sign up for the class expecting to “just toss some paint on a canvas and call it art” who become disappointed and frustrated after the first lesson.

I had someone call me yesterday asking for abstract painting lessons. They specifically asked for private lessons… which I am fine with. At about this point in the conversation, I always ask the prospective student what they would like to learn exactly, and what sort of ideas they had in mind that we could start out with. The individual informed me that they were not interested in any sort of “procedural” (another word for technique) lessons and that they “just wanted to make abstract paintings because abstract is easy”. I was flabbergasted when I heard it.. “abstract is easy”. The phrase repeated itself in my mind again and again during the rest of the conversation. “Abstract is easy, abstract is easy, abstract is easy, abstract is easy, abstract is easy, abstract is easy…” and then another preposterous phrase was uttered, “I’ll be printing pictures of art off the Internet and you are going to show me how to paint those… you know, break it down for me through demos about how the artist made them. So that I can make them too.” … Double whammy flabbergasted.

Honestly, I thought I was being pranked at this point. Anyway, I gathered up my shattered brain and managed to sound rather calm (totally unlike what I was feeling at the moment) so that I could properly address the prospective student. I told them that it would be nearly impossible for me to not mention any sort of technique or art history when teaching art lessons… especially abstract. I then quickly brought up that much abstract art is actually based off reality… unless we are dealing with Jackson Pollock “action painting” method of art-making – then, we are dealing with process-based abstraction. I paused for effect and then continued, “How would I have been able to describe that to anyone without mentioning art history?” Another pause. I thought about mentioning that I would not be helping them copy other people’s work, and that I would teach the class based on self-expression but… too late. The person thanked me for my time and then hung up.

So, I started playing that phrase over and over in my head again… “Abstract is easy, abstract is easy, abstract is easy…” … oy!

For anyone interested in reading an essay about methods of teaching art, this is a great one.