Molly Nuzzo:
Workshop Type: figure painting, direct oil painting,
heightened color palette
Victor Ekpuk:
Workshop Type: symbolism, iconography, narrative interplay of mark making and writing
WORKSHOPS
VICTOR EKPUK: iconography and symbolism workshop
By Gene Pasay
Victor Ekpuk’s workshop with the members of the Student Art League was an event in which the students learned to create an art that incorporates his ideas of symbols and iconography combined with a focus on a balanced compositions.
He first went through his artworks explaining how he came up with the design. He noted that his “art idea” is to create something that others will give him the meaning via relations though life by looking at the symbols he drew. He showed his “Amsterdam Central” as a way to explain how he captured the essence of Netherlands through invented icons. Before the students started drawing with five different colored markers on a very large piece of paper, he gave us a question and a hint:
“How can you make your own compositions?” , “use symbols to create art...to make it pleasing ” , “Capture ideas into the essence.” Then everyone tried their best effort until it was time for the Mr. Ekpuk to critique our work. In the last hour, the students were asked to grab the chalk and work together to create a masterpiece on the wall from where Victor Ekpuk started the lead. The resulting drawing was a great collaborations of ideas into a style that was harmonious. These drawings were on display at the closing reception in the Silberman Gallery.
By Carolyn Graybeal
MOLLY NUZZO: Painting Workshop
Professor Molly Nuzzo led a portrait painting workshop. The free, day long workshop was open to students of any painting background.
“The main focus of the workshop is to explore painting using very intense heightened color, without losing a realistic sense of shape and form,” explains Nuzzo who readily embraces color in her own work. “Color is the reason painting is exciting to me. My primary focus is the human figure, and the forms of the face and head are fascinating to study. I find that painters are often overly cautious about using color in figurative work. My hope is to teach students to let go of preconceived ideas of skin tones, and embrace the expressive possibilities of a heightened palette.”
Students used the same minimal palette and instructed to primed their canvases a bright red on which they applied rich blues, yellows and browns. Mixing was done on the canvas not the palette. In this way the painting process becomes an exercise in color control. To be successful, students must understand how colors react together and recognize “the appearance of color is relative” not static. As if on cue Nuzzo cautioned her students, “Watch out. That yellow ochre is looking greenish gray on the cad background!”
“But I found the limited premixing of colors more challenging,” says Katarina Öberg one of the students attending Nuzzo’s workshop. “I never tried this method of painting before. But I really enjoy trying new methods and approaches to creating art, so I am happy I took the workshop.”
The final lesson says Nuzzo? “Embrace color! Don't use black, or over-use white; instead, make a chromatic temperature change instead of just a value change. In other words, instead of just making a hue lighter or darker, use a different hue! This leads to beautiful, living skin tones, and helps students stay away from making chalky muddy dead colors. Also, have fun with color! It's endlessly fascinating! Get excited about it! Be bold!”