Midterm Critique

Before the midterm critique I think I was more focused on how well done my work was and if I had enough of it. I don't think I was necessarily nervous but just kind of wanted to get it over with, which worked out nicely because I went first. Overall I felt it was a good experience and that I got helpful feedback from the faculty. As far as the criticism I got, I felt like most of the faculty expressed that my paintings needed more of a narrative behind them. They said that I had skill with the paint but that the paintings just kind of looked like snap shots. After thinking about it all week I agree with what they were saying. When I was younger I used to make really interesting art and I was able to come up with more ideas in my head; the past couple years/ just as I've gotten older, I've found it harder to be imaginative when it comes to my art. I can't easily create a story or image in my head and if I do I have a hard time executing the idea. Lately I think I focus more on the technical aspects of the painting; how accurate or precise can I make this?, does this look nice?, would someone buy this or hang this in their home?, rather than just creating an image from scratch in my head or executing a developed idea. I think the reasoning for this is just the pressure of how I'm going to make art work for me as a career. Moving forward I am going to take the faculties advise and try to create more of a narrative in my paintings; an idea I have so far is to possibly show this struggle I'm having with being imaginative, and to question the people I'm painting and sketch them in person. Some other criticism I got was to look at famous artists instead of the ones I found online, and that I should be looking at art history. At the time I was a bit frustrated about that because I actually really do love art history and I know a decent amount of artists but I didn't really have the chance to say that. I also didn't throw out names of artists from art history that I like/look at because I didn't feel like those artists work were reflected in what I was showing the faculty at that time. I do agree that it's important to look at art history but I don't think there's harm in looking at artists who aren't famous; just because an artist isn't well known doesn't mean you can't be inspired by their work or learn from it. Other than that I pretty much agreed with their feedback and hope I can improve my work moving forward.