Television Producer Picks Up Paintbrush

Interview with Ruth Golden

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Ruth Golden, a Television Producer by day, and an artist by night, first became aware of The Berta Art Academy when she went looking for a mixed media art class closer to home. After reading the description of the course, she was ready to attend her first art class...

"I was drawn to the studio the moment I walked in to it," Ruth explains. "It’s filled with art to inspire and just has a comfortable feeling. I never considered not going back and I continue to enjoy my Saturdays at the Academy tremendously. The three hours just fly by as I become consumed in the process and sharing ideas with Clara and the other art students. It is a safe place to be yourself, and the rest of the world just disappears."

While Ruth hasn't taken an art class with another art teacher to compare teaching styles, she's quite happy working with Clara Berta on Saturday mornings. She likes the fact that the classes offer a supportive atmosphere with plenty of "play" time. But what she really enjoys is the interaction between Clara and the other art students, interaction that she says is "inspiring and encouraging".

Today, we sat down to talk with Ruth about what art has come to mean to her…

 

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Berta Art Academy: How do you perceive art?

Ruth: Until I began taking a class, art was foreign to me. I did not understand the nuances people saw or derive much meaning from art other than liking the way it looked.

When I started creating art, I found myself talking about each piece’s evolution and seeing how each stroke and line could change the whole feel of the painting and just feeling where I wanted to create more light or dark in the piece, or include a specific shape or marking.

My discovery of painting is very new still and it has definitely reduced my stress and has truly brought joy into my life. A new path that I never even knew existed is now open to me.

Berta Art Academy: What inspires your art?

Ruth: Everything has been inspiring me.

Generally ideas, phrases, and painting titles pop into my head and then I create them. I also see shapes in a lot of things and use that to build on; especially in my work with the dried acrylic.

Nature is a large influence on me, too. I enjoy walking my dog and looking at the colors and intricacies of the large variety of flowers in my neighborhood, and the many shapes I see when viewing living objects like birds, flowers and fish.

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Berta Art Academy: Can you give an example of a piece of art you created, and where the inspiration came from?

Ruth: I have a category in my online gallery called "DeskArt". This all started when I was cleaning my palate of the dried acrylic and pulled off a piece that looked like a fish. It is on the canvas exactly as I pulled it.

Because I had so many random pieces as well, I decided to build a coral reef on a relatively small canvas. When I stood it up, it occurred to me that this would be a great way to get some art into a small space and that the dried acrylic was a great material to use in my work.

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Berta Art Academy: What is your creative process like?

Ruth: So far I’ve been lucky that I have a million ideas floating around in my head, and I have six pages of scribbled ideas in a notebook.

I work sitting on my couch, using the coffee table as my easel with a bin of paints and other supplies next to it. I tend to have multiple projects going at once… I start one project and while its drying, I go on to the next. Much like in class, I really just go with whatever is foremost on my mind.

Berta Art Academy: What do you like most about mixed media art?

Ruth: I love the freedom of just painting, as I do not draw well at all.

The collage aspect adds great texture and interest to the pieces. I’m also somewhat of a messy worker and this medium is very forgiving of that as it allows mistakes to be turned into “happy accidents”.

Berta Art Academy: What is your favorite art tool to use?

Ruth: I don’t think I have a favorite yet, although using the matte medium to help correct mistakes has saved me on many occasions.

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Berta Art Academy: What is your favorite surface to create with?

Ruth: So far I’ve done most of my work on canvas, which I do enjoy. In class, Clara had us do some monoprints, which I love!

Berta Art Academy: Have you developed an artistic style yet?

Ruth: I am calling my style "Primitive Pop".

I have a strong inner child that is coming out and I use a lot of bright colors. I enjoy having them mix together on the canvas so the backgrounds aren’t solid colored. I’ve developed it just through letting go and lots of experimenting.

Berta Art Academy: If someone were considering taking an art class, what advice would you offer to make the experience a positive one?

Ruth: I would advise a new art student to go into class with no expectations and to lose all self-consciousness. I’ve been taught there is no right or wrong way to create art and I am choosing to believe it.

To learn more about Ruth Golden's art, check out her site, The Gallery of Truth.

 

Aspiring Artist Finds Refuge in Mixed Media

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I was approached by a freelance writer for a feature story on EmptyEasel.com, but when I checked her out, I discovered that she was a mixed media artist, too… and though she has a very different style, I thought it would be fun to do a little Q&A with her, myself.

  

Alyice Edrich has always been a creative soul, dabbling in various crafts and trying to find her way in the art world hasn't always been easy. She would see so many wonderful, talented artists… artists she is simply in awe of, and she would wonder, "What could I possibly offer the world compared to these masters?"

 

Her self-doubt caused her to keep her desire—her craving to create—a secret. Sure, she'd create a few trinkets here and there over the years, and she loved to sit down with her children (when they were smaller) and craft together, but the idea of attempting to make something that would sell, let alone something she would willingly share with the world, that was another story entirely.

 

But after moving to South Dakota, the long winters and the quiet of the land took their hold on her and she developed a serious case of depression. Without a creative outlet (as they were now renting and her children were "too grown" to create with her) the depression simply lingered. It got so bad, that her husband feared for her… that's when he told her that she had to start creating again.

 

"We may be renting, but you can still create," he told her. "And the children may not want to craft with you anymore, but there's no reason you can't do it by yourself."

 

Of course, "by herself" wasn't something she wanted to hear. She felt too alone, too isolated, as it was. But she decided to listen to her husband and give it a try and what she discovered was that creating something with her hands again made her feel alive again, concentrating on the task at hand made the isolation disappear, and the final outcome—whether it was good or bad—made her smile.

 

The more she began creating with her hands, the more she wanted to share what she created with others, but not knowing anyone in the local area made it hard to share, let alone get constructive feedback, so she turned the 'net where she met a woman who told her to start an art blog, and start posting her art online.

 

"Even if you're the only person who reads your blog," the woman told her, "the act of sharing your art will free you, challenge you, and encourage you. It will give the confidence you need to keep on creating."

 

It's now been four years since Alyice started that journey and she's so grateful for her husband's insistence that she pick up a paintbrush… mainly because it opened up a whole new world to her and allowed her to meet some amazing artists, and partly because the act of creating something heals her soul in a way writing, cooking, or other tasks can't.

 

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Today, Alyice creates what she likes to call contemporary folk art, or mixed media art. "It's rudimentary compared to the artists I admire," says Alyice, "but it makes me happy."

 

Alyice will try anything once, but what she's found is that she really enjoys taking old bottles, tin cans, molding paste, and acrylic paints and creating art jars. For her, they are functional art at its best and a great way to de-stress, calm anxiety, and simply "be in the moment". And it's a great way to enjoy the guilty pleasure of watching her favorite, mind-numbing sitcoms.

 

You can learn more about Alyice and her art at alyiceedrich.blogspot.com or alyiceedrich.net

Abstraction review at Barnsdall Gallery Theatre

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by Robe Roberson

Atop a million lit candles, Barnsdall Gallery Theatre was glorious as expected with decades of confidence under its belt; beautiful people of like minds that night, liquid gold in every glass, the four seasons balancing on the walls like clouds shifting forms the longer I looked…I was a kid again seeing nothing and everything.  Though not her aim, I found what I needed--a bit of myself in all of them…as in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, “It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.”

The blues were the featured pieces—“Light after Rain”, “Oceans of Life”, “LA Through House of Blues”. Azure in scope and a Zanzibar escape in imagination.  The yellows competed equally well with every hue of Big Bear’s aspens present and accounted for.  The red, featured in the August 2009 edition of SingularCity Magazine smoldered with emotion, a Rumi red, from which I found my own original delight in the piece “Transition” and how Clara captures the vulnerability in all of us.  And the oranges exuded warmth of holding the hand of someone special.

“Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.”  Wilde’s continuation couldn’t be more true about Clara Berta’s body of work.  Come celebrate some part of yourself in her next showing.

 

Los Angeles Painting Classes Share Abstract Painting

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Laura Rico created mixed media work in progress, 8 x 8 on wood panel.

Los Angeles painting classes are ideal for people who really want to develop their painting skills. Such courses feature different types and forms of painting like oil painting, watercolour painting and even abstract painting.

The art of abstract painting started a very long time ago. Artists began this art hundreds of years ago. In fact, you’ve probably observed a number of the more well-known abstract paintings before. You might recall a popular abstract painting created by Van Gogh. Picasso also owned an abstract painting or two as well. Modigliani is also noted for his abstract painting work. Owing to these artists, and many others, the art of abstract painting has gained popularity in the modern world.

Abstract painting is defined in lots of ways. It usually makes use of form and color in a non-figurative method and don’t depict any kind of entity or object in the natural world. It doesn’t illustrate objects in the natural world. Rather, an abstract painting uses colors and shapes in a non-representing and non-objective way. It can be of anyone, anything, or simply nothing at all. It is usually used to describe cubist and futurist art early in the 20th century, which portrays realistic forms in a simplified method, leaving only a reference of the initial subject. Most of these paintings asserted that it only captured the natural attributes of the portrayed things than its external look. The idea of abstract painting and abstract art were invented to convey a cultural phenomenon that had swept the whole western culture. Nonetheless, the concept of non-figurative or non-objective art was not invented in the twentieth century as most people have thought. People have been doing non-figurative art since man has learned to draw. It was believed that the Islam Religion forbids portrayal of people and had created Calligraphy, which was considered as a better standard in ornamental artistry and 1 form of non-figurative art.

This kind of painting has striking, vibrant, and vivid colors. In addition, it has a lot of biometric patterns that are combined with the striking hues to make the paintings be noticeable. It’s both peculiar and stunning to see an abstract painting. It utilizes a visual language of form, hue and line to make a composition that may be present having a degree of freedom from visual references on earth. It really is a large umbrella to which numerous kinds of art lay. It’s a very wide genre containing numerous, many art forms. Basically, any kind of art that doesn’t attempt to realistically depict something, and as an alternative uses texture, colors, shapes or space to depict that thing is known as abstract.

With Los Angeles painting classes, you can fully grasp abstract painting much better. It is vital that you delight in all forms of art, including the strange art of an abstract painting. It is not as simple as it appears and can be challenging to comprehend particularly for those who aren’t directly fascinated to art, but it’s really an interesting thing to view. Abstract paintings have meanings, and we usually hear artists mention, it has a goal. For those who see the beauty of abstract paintings, they can readily say that there’s a lot more than what meets the eye and it relies on the way the artist views and expresses it, and how the crowd or viewer sees and interprets it.

“Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult.  It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for colours, and that you be a true poet. This last is essential.” -Wassily Kadinsky

You’ll most certainly appreciate this mixed media artist who specializes in Los Angeles painting classes and everything regarding art which virtually any fanatic truly adores. She’s also popular for her famous painting lessons that unwraps a world of imagination. She certainly does not dissatisfy!