Twelfth grade art students made a tour of 5 Chelsea art galleries as part of Dena Schutzer's senior studio art class. The painting exhibitions encompassed gestural abstractions of Louise Fishman, popular culture-based montages by Robert Rauschenberg, expressive cityscapes of Diane Drescher, a group show of figurative painters each with a different approach, and ended with Morandi's reductive still lifes.
Each exhibit left impressions on the students:
"I really liked Diane Drescher's gallery, and would maybe like to paint another landscape with that style in mind. I liked how she created clear representations of landscapes, not with great detail, but with textures and blocks of color to define the objects in the painting. I would like to free myself from focusing on so much detail, and her style might help me do that. I also think it would help me to use more paint, helping me stay away from details." -Grace Gilbert
"I really enjoyed looking at the Louise Fishman's paintings. It was interesting to see how she used abstraction in order to portray her ideas. In each one of her paintings, there was a grid. However, that grid was always somewhat distorted, trying to illustrate that time and order was being destroyed. I enjoyed looking at the different colors she used and they ways in which she weaved the different pieces together. From these paintings, I realized that even abstractions have their own way of telling a story, and can end up being as believable as realistic paintings." -Nico Miller
"In Louise Fishman's paintings the thin lines look as if they were trying to enclose and contain the emotions which were conveyed by the vibrant, messy, multi-colored, rushed large brushstrokes." - Talia Cohen
The students have since each incorporated an element from one of the artists that moved them, in their own painting. Their work will be on view for their senior show.
