"Abstract Acrylic Painting" is a class I'm taking this quarter through the Clark College Community and Continuing Education program. The teacher, Cathy Ekhoff, is the kind of person you want to spend time with, the kind of person you want to be like when you grow up: cheerful and accepting while at the same time knowledgeable and authoritative.
You never know what you're going to get in an art class, right? I mean, I know two people, in my own family, who have great artistic skills and instincts, who decided against majoring in art and/or design in college when they realized how capricious the whole thing is. One of them realized in community college that their work wasn't being judged on any rational or definable criteria, but on how the other students in the class reacted, as well as what kind of mood the teacher was in that day.
This isn't my first art class through the Clark CCE program, but it's the first one I've really enjoyed, and what's really funny is that I thought, after the first class meeting, that it was going to be awful. But I had paid my money and I wanted to go to the second meeting, and I'm glad I did. Because I learned. A lot.
In the first three-hour class, we talked about what is even meant by the term "abstract." Then we had to draw some little pictures based on what another person told us about the originals, without seeing them for ourselves. Then, for homework, we were supposed to use our own acrylic paints at home to come up with a painting of our drawings. Below is the photo my partner was describing to me, using only words of shape, size, and orientation in space, along with the drawing I did based on her description.

And here is the painting I made, at home, from this drawing. I know: It's not great in any way, and when I compared it with the homework paintings by the other students, I was almost embarrassed. (I took photos of the other students' works, but I don't feel comfortable posting them here b/c they're not mine and I didn't get their permission.) But not quite, because of the way the instructor talked about it: with some praise (for my colors), a lot of encouragement, and some practical suggestions.

In the second three-hour class, the teacher gave a 10-minute talk on color theory and had us all make our own color wheel, and then gave us little cards to copy, matching the colors on them. "If you were in art school, you could have a whole semester on color matching," she said. "But you've now had 10 minutes on it, and you're going to do great." So we spent the next two hours painting these little cards, trying to match the colors exactly. And, finally, we put them all together, using grid numbers the teacher had written on the backs of the cards.
Below are the little cards I tried to copy and match the colors of, and, on the right, the final result, when we put them all together:
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A gigantic pear: Pretty cool, huh! |
Meanwhile, halfway through this class, one of the students said, "I thought we were going to be doing our own projects in here." The teacher looked puzzled. The student explained that she wanted to bring her supplies to class and paint whatever she was working on, because "I don't have a table at home where I can spread out and work."
One of the other students said, "I just use my kitchen table. I spread out a big sheet of plastic, like we do in here." That first student shook her head. "I can't do that." (We don't know why, but of course we're not going to ask for details. She knows what she wants.)
The teacher said, "Of course you can bring your own things and work on your own projects. But my understanding is that when you paid to take this class, you were expecting to be taught, and that's why I'm teaching you what I know." And she does know so much, way beyond what this student and any of the others of us know; and she knows how to teach.
Later, that same student complained about how "hard" it was to do the color-matching exercise, and wanted to know what the finished project would even look like. Again, the teacher looked puzzled. "This is called learning. It's not supposed to be easy. It's supposed to stretch you beyond what you knew before." (She used words to that effect, not speaking as bluntly as I've made it sound.)
And that's what I'm enjoying about this class: I'm learning, I'm doing things I would never have thought to do on my own, and it's not easy in any way, but it's worth it; I'm expanding my experience of the world. Another student in the class, whom I'd met in my first CCE art class, and who is an experienced and talented artist, came up to me and said, with a huge smile, "Isn't this fun! I'm learning so much! And it's completely different from any other class I've ever taken." I was glad to know someone else was enjoying it as much as I was. (And in fact I think most of the class members felt the same way we did.)