|
Ashland artist Alicia Mannix exhibits two dozen paintings at Walker
Elementary School, where she will teach students there an abstract
self portrait class called "Spontaneous Doodlism."
Her
painting style will become a teaching form for fourth-graders
in urging students to free-form their way into making abstract
art. In the class, she will emphasize creation, while giving the
limbo to quality.
"That's
the key," she said about any given finished piece of art. "It's
good, bad, according to whom? Is there a central committee in
the Universe that determines what is good or bad?"
"No."
"With
utilitarian art, you can make a judgment based on functionality,"
Mannix said. "But with expressive art, one has to ask himself
or herself, 'What is the purpose to it?' And there isn't one.
It's just to create, to have fun." Her show, "Spontaneous Doodlism,"
opened January 25 -- her birthday -- and runs through March 5,
at Walker School, on Walker Avenue. The exhibit is open to the
public Monday through Friday during normal school hours. She plans
the one-time class, with Nancy Keim's fourth grade class, including
her 10-year-old son, Thomas.
"I
teach people a completely different way of creating art," Mannix
said, adding that her method purposefully lacks the notions of
formality and limit.
"It's
like giving instruction to someone who is doing improvisational
jazz," she said. "My instruction is, sit down, here's the paint."
In
the classroom, she plans to have the students paint abstract self
portraits. It will be the second class she has taught at the school.
The first was in Spring 2001.
"They
were painting with sticks and pans and branches, because a lot
of times, that's what I use," she said. "And they were painting
with all of these things, looking for shapes to emerge."
"Creation
is a sacred experience to me, and I almost always do it alone,"
Mannix said. But she will teach the students, and paint with them,
showing them how to not fear the doodle of abstraction and how
to release the paint and "get satisfaction from a burst of color."
"I
look at a painting through all directions, and most of the time,
there is an emerging shape -- a person or an animal. If I develop
it, it's because it really wants to come out. It wants to be born,"
she said.
She
likened her painting and teaching style to Maichaelangelo's late
sculptural series, "Slaves."
"There
are theses figures that look like they just want to come out of
that stone," she said. "He has a number of sculptures that are
called 'unfinished,' but I think they are finished."
"The
modern culture is hung up on perfection of producing classical
forms with idealism and perfection," Mannix said. "But those pieces
that are completely finished are usually completed to please the
patron, not the artist himself or herself."
"The
reason I am developing this style is to teach people to be completely
unafraid of doing art and not be completely hung up on the results.
The way to do it is to start with no expectations for the finished
work. Absolutely no expectations."
"A
lot of my creative time is spent looking at my painting, and looking
and looking, to see if there is any change needed," she said.
"But not during that initial stage of Doodlism."
She
said the technique helps avert "seeing a blank canvas and freezing
because of fear that it won't come out as good art."
"If
one can clear her mind from the results, then something incredible
and miraculous will happen. The minute you expect something, it
is lost."
Mannix
said the fourth grade is "the perfect time to instill the
no-fear approach as past that age, children are already familiar
and even uptight about conventions."
"It's
important to nurture children's innate ability to express freely,"
she said.
Mannix
plans to launch a new practice with her painting technique, gearing
it toward "helping people unleash their creativity through
Doodle Therapy" in a one-on-one, group or family basis.
|
