Or more to the point, how did studying classical realism save my career as an artist?
I went to art school at SFSU and studied conceptual and information arts, which I loved and the emphasis on making art with computers. These skills definitely helped me land the jobs that paid off my student loans after college. But, painting was always my first love. I took a few painting classes at college which were great, however the training was not particularly formal or rigorous. The curriculum was focused on letting the students explore and do what they wanted rather than any technical training. We were given minimal instruction about materials or technique and turned loose in the studio to create whatever we wanted. This was great from an experimental standpoint, but I would argue that creativity suffered as the students never really learned the skills to actually bolster or utilize their creativity to very effectively.
Once I left school I painted for years but my work was was plagued with technical problems. Proportions were off, images that should have had had depth dimension would turn out flat; complex ideas were exceedingly difficult for me to execute so I eventually began to avoid them. Getting my work done became increasingly frustrating and difficult. Eventually, I stopped painting altogether and took up creative writing. I felt like a failure as a painter and decided that my problem was the lack of innate talent.
As a last ditch effort I decided to take a painting class at Sadie Valerie Atelier. I figured I didn’t have anything to lose and if it didn’t work I could just continue writing. I signed up for a three week drawing course. I ended up staying for two years. What I had thought was a lack of talent turned out to be a lack of basic skills. Many of the problems I was having with my work stemmed from a lack of formal training. At Sadie’s atelier I finally really learned how to draw, the importance of sketching and drawing your subject matter before you paint it, how to model values correctly and make an drawn or painted two dimensional object look three dimensional. The information was incredibly valuable and helpful to me and resuscitated my career as a painter. She was a great teacher and mentor.
Sadly, Sadie’s brick and mortar Atelier closed a couple of years ago, but you can still take classes at her online school: Sadie Valeri Atelier.
My main point of this post is not to write a glowing review of Sadie’s skills as a teacher, but to say that the skills I learned studying classical realism have helped my enormously in my artwork now. While, I have a long way to go and I look at my artistic achievements as a continuum/process, I am light years ahead of where I would have been without learning these skills. Even though some of the work I’ve been doing has diverged from classical realism and I expect will continue to do so, I still apply the lessons I learned in every project. I really wish this more formalized program was taught in the art school I went to. I’m not singling out SFSU for this lack, I’ve talked to other people who attended other art schools, (some of them quite prestigious), who had similar complaints. Even if your artistic journey is not going to be geared towards this traditional form of painting, learning it will enhance whatever you wind up doing.
Ironically, studying classical realism enhanced my appreciation for other modes of painting. I had never liked a lot of abstract work before studying classical realism, thinking it mostly too simple and dumbed down. However, studying a more rigorous program of art allowed me to see these many abstract works in a whole new light. What was missing from my interactions with abstract art was the practical education and history that allowed me to see where the artists were coming from.
So, to sum up, even if you aren’t interested in classical realism as an artist, I believe that a course or two in classical realism is still necessary to give you the foundation you need to be the most successful artist you can be.