DailyPhoto 09-17-09 (window light)
Thursday September 17, 2009.
Pretty pretty.
I just remembered this phase in my high school art career when I was fascinated with light coming into empty rooms. The peak of this was when I was away at a month long summer art program at Maryland Institute College of Art. I remember one day in my painting class when we were each supposed to bring a book of one of our favorite artists and tell the class about them and their work and why we chose it. I remember feeling completely out of my depth. Many of my classmates were already well-versed in the fine art of Artspeak, and chose artists whose work was quite conceptual and intellectual. And I chose Edward Hopper, a quintessential American Realist, and tried to explain how I loved the colors he chose and how he depicted light in a room and how it also conveyed an emotional sensibility, becoming all the more flustered as I saw that my classmates were completely unconvinced. It’s not something I can put into words easily, when an artwork really touches me somehow. It comes from a very visceral, intuitive place that is just beyond words somehow. Mr. Hopper said it himself, “If you could say it in words there would be no reason to paint.”
Edward Hopper, "Sun in an Empty Room"
Anyway, I spent a lot of time that summer painting empty rooms with light coming into windows. Of course never coming close to anything Hopper achieved with his empty rooms. A few months ago I photographed a bunch of my old stuff, before getting rid of most of it. Here’s a very blue room, from the summer of 1994.
