Sandy Quang Archives | Page 3 of 3

February 16, 2014

Painting the absurd

Still life by Sandy Quang. About 18X24, oil on canvas.

I’ve had several students painting and drawing a sprawling still life over the last few weeks. Sandy Quang has done a bang-up job with it.

Sandy has a BFA from Pratt and is finishing her MA from Hunter College, so I must share some credit for teaching her. However, she has studied with me since she was in high school. She is just now coming into maturity as a painter.

The still-life set-up includes an Altoids box, wallpaper brush, bust of Pericles, Golliwog, phone receiver, hatbox, beads, plastic reindeer, lace mantilla, and two ugly silk flowers. They were chosen so that students couldn’t fall back on narrative, historical patina, or folksy allure as crutches.

Her first draft was a funny idea—juxtaposing the Golliwog and bust of Pericles—but a mediocre composition. I included it here to remind people that even good painters mess up regularly. The difference between good and great is returning to the subject until you get it right.

Sandy’s first draft, juxtaposing the Golliwog and bust of Pericles, was a good idea but a bad composition, so she jettisoned it.

Take the time to consider why her final painting works, because it is instructive. The objects themselves don’t have any narrative, historical patina, or folksy allure to use as crutches (which is why I chose them). She treats the painting not as a series of items but as a pattern on the surface of the canvas. It works as a value pattern and as a color pattern. Her drawing is very accurate. She doesn’t get hung up on the details, but she does include the over-the-top sparkles on the reindeer’s back.

A careful comparison of an earlier iteration with the finished painting shows you her extensive redrawing, until the finished work was simplified but accurate. Every brush-stroke should be toward the goal of greater accuracy.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

October 7, 2013

Self-Driving Cars and other good design

a guest post by Sandy Quang

1968 Jean-Pierre-Ponthieu concept-car of the future. Some ideas just never get the respect they deserve.

Inspired by a short conversation about self-driving cars this weekend, I decided they would be a wonderful thing to investigate. Imagine what a car that didn’t have to dedicate a quarter of its internal real estate to navigation would look like.

Would the shape of a self-driving car even stay the same?

The most well-known examples are Google’s self-driving cars, powered by software called Google Chauffeur. As with any newly-designed product, driverless cars are bug-prone and still need lots of testing. But the appeal of this idea is not only functional, but aesthetic.

Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Car, 1933.

In the early twentieth century, a famous American designer, Henry Dreyfuss, embraced the Streamline aesthetic, improving the look and feel of American transportation and consumer products. Dreyfuss pioneered the full-sized plasticine car model.

A BMW prototype carved in industrial plasticine. How much nicer if they were made of chocolate.

The process of designing cars themselves itself, for people who love to create, is an art itself and can often be overlooked. If you depart from the ideas of what current cars look like, the possibilities are amazing.

One more workshop left this year, and it starts a week from today! Join me or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

October 3, 2013

Start with the canvas!

Autumn leaves…. as done by a painter.

When the gifted Shibori dye-master Jane Bartlett offered to help me make fancy cookies for an event, the planning revolved not around the baking, but what array of icing colors would yield the most natural fall colors.

“I suppose I have to get up early and make the dough,” I sighed.

“Yes, you must start with the canvas!” she answered.

The canvas: my mother’s Christmas cookie recipe.

My trusted assistant Sandy Quang (who has a BFA from Pratt) also pitched in. At one point I was lamenting that the maples leaves I made with fuchsia and chartreuse looked good; the ones with fuchsia and green did not. “That’s because the pink and green are too close in value,” Sandy observed. I’m so happy that her pricey art education is paying off.

Jane Bartlett puts her dye-mixing skills to work, in a medium she’s never used before.

“The reason male artists are more successful than their female counterparts is that they never get sidetracked into projects like this,” I grumbled as the hours stretched on.

She left the color streaky, to imitate the veins of the leaves.

“No, they get sidetracked into furniture-making. This is ephemeral art,” Sandy chirped.

A good array of pre-mixed pigments speeds the job up.

I suppose that label could be applied to all good food preparation, which certainly gives humanity more joy than, say, Mark Quinn’s Self, which is a frozen cast of the artist’s head made of his own blood.

Sandy specialized in oak leaves; I specialized in maple leaves. Jane was a generalist, but nobody particularly liked doing the sumac leaves.

Each time I teach a workshop at Lakewatch Manor, my students react with joy to the artistic, delicious meals they are served. I observe that the innkeepers seem to take equal joy in making them.

One more workshop left this year! Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

September 19, 2013

A change is as good as a rest

If one can make a pretty photo out of squirrel ectoplasm, one can make anything beautiful!

By the time I’m done doing my five miles and my exercises, I’m usually ready to go back to bed.

Yesterday, I did exactly that. I’m worn out.

In May, a large stack of empty frames clattered to the floor from an overhead shelf. As they fell straight down into an out-of-the-way corner and I was in my usual dither, I ignored them.

It’s been a pretty crazy summer, but I have an even crazier autumn ahead: two trips to Maine, a trip to Rye, and a daughter’s wedding, all happening in the next six weeks. And I have to get my winter supply of canvases in before the snow flies.

To that end, I decided I should use this glorious fall day to straighten my workshop. I picked up the pile of frames only to learn that they had crushed a squirrel to death. Months ago.

I confess: I’m a screamer. After Sandy Quang poked the remains with a stick, she was a screamer too. The IT department is at his day job. His sole contribution was a text that read, “So, meat’s back on the menu!” It was left to poor Charles Wang to dispose of what was left of the corpse. He was remarkably calm about it, considering that both Sandy and I were pretty well off our respective nuts.

“What are we going to do about this mess on the floor,” I asked Sandy.

“Take a picture,” she responded (like the true artist she is). So I did.

I decided that spraying bleach everywhere would probably work about as well as burning my garage down. By the time I was done explaining to our mailman what the ruckus was about and running to the store for bleach, my energies were quite restored. As soon as that bleach has burned its way through my floor, I’m ready to make a thousand canvases!

Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

September 16, 2013

Wrestling with God

The Vision After the Sermon (Jacob wrestling with the Angel),Paul Gauguin, 1888, Scottish National Gallery.

I asked my trusty assistant, Sandy Quang, to fill in for me today:

I recently watched a documentary about Oswald Chambers. Chambers was essentially Jacob from Genesis 32-22-32. Chambers had experienced failure in his career as an artist, and one night he went alone to pray in a cave. Like Jacob, Chambers wrestled with God. The moment they went to pray and wrestle with God was the moment of their transition. Following the path of God and following their desire’s yielded different results. Following their own desires had left them cornered, but prayer allowed them to have a change of heart.

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, Gustave Doré, 1855, wood engraving.

As an art historian, I often see images of Jacob wrestling with an angel and not a man. The first painting that comes to mind is Paul Gauguin’s vibrant “Vision after the Sermon”, and the second is a solemn engraving by Gustave Doré entitled “Jacob Wrestling with the Angel”. Gauguin’s painting is brightly colored, depicted as a spectacle. Breton village women are gathered watching the struggle. As for Doré the story is depicted as a personal struggle on a cliff, heightening the sense of danger that comes with the struggle. Doré seems to be closer to the truth in his depiction: the quietness of the surrounding in which one ought to wrestle with God. Despite the different portrayal of the subjects, the story of struggle and change rings true. For Jacob, his wrestle with God resulted in a new name, Israel. For Chambers, his wrestle with God resulted in a new career path.

(Sandy Quang)

Join me in October, 2013 at Lakewatch Manor—which is selling out fast—or let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in 2014. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

January 29, 2008

The Kung Fu Fighters

I have recently had the opportunity to work with two young artists preparing portfolios for college. (Their work follows in the posts below.) They are laughingly called my Art Slaves since they have been in my studio seven days a week. One of my adult students wondered why they make such swift progress and she doesn’t. “If you’re willing to be chained to an easel seven days a week and do what you’re told, you can do it too,” I said. (But the charm of adult learners is that they are individualistic, stubborn, and idiosyncratic, and I wouldn’t have them any other way.)

Neither Sandy nor Ze had ever painted in oils before December. That they each have an oil painting in their portfolio is an indication of how hard they’ve worked.

January 29, 2008

Completed portfolio: Sandy Puifong Quang

Sandy Puifong Quang is 19 and will graduate from Monroe Community College in May with an AS in liberal arts and a GPA of around 3.5. Although she has always loved design, Sandy didn’t know she loved art until she began taking studio classes at MCC. Sandy speaks three dialects of Chinese along with some Russian and French. Her family are refugees from the fall of Vietnam and run a restaurant in Rochester.

Sandy started working with me seriously in the summer of 2007, although I have known her for many years.