Oh, the Mystery!

People love this painting. I've never been fond of it myself. I think it looks slapdash and not particularly interesting. This is a prime example of art being subjective.

This was the second project in my painting class. We were to take architectural elements from various magazines and then put them together in a sort of abstract way. We were also supposed to divide the painting into three areas. One area would be predominantly warm colors, one predominately cool and the third a fairly even mixture.

The architectural elements you can probably see right away are the drapery and the stairs curving down into a foyer. There's also a counter-top, rosette decorations and a circular window. Keep in mind, this isn't supposed to be an exact representation of a room. It's a lot of elements put together to make an interesting montage.


The other thing about this painting was that several classmates suggested that this assignment really solidified the 'styles' of a lot of the students. I was singled out as one such due to my brush strokes and use of color. I made my colors more dusty and muted with this one to mix things up from the last time around and got some really beautiful hues.


My instructor loved this part of the painting. The vertical lines of all the different colors. She complimented the way I made the colors work. I admit I didn't put a hell of a lot of thought into it I just kind of went with what I thought would work. Since it turned out well, I guess I did all right.

As sneaky as I was with the first painting by mixing three of the same colors together to get the brightness I was going for, I really did take this opportunity to stretch myself as far as mixing went. The dusty rose color, the mustard yellow and the mossy greens turned out gorgeous.


It's not an awful painting in my mind, I've just never understood why so many people in the art department saw something extraordinary in it. I had missed two classes due to illness so a lot of this was me playing catch-up which is why I look at it as so sloppy and half made. There are interesting elements to it and things I like but, at the same time, I think I've done work far better than this.