The Dreaded Palette Knife
Workshop | Available
In contrast to the well-known, soft-and-supple, agile and nimble brush we use to perform all of the most delightful movements in a painting, from subtle to acrobatic, the painting knife is thought to be blunt, harsh and inflexible, relegated to servile and uninspired mixing of colors or scraping the palette. Many artists dread the idea of applying paint that has any degree of thickness, sharpness or brevity, although they secretly yearn for a way to obtain body in their stroke, edge to their forms, width and length to a transition of color or value, or physical dimension to their painted surface. It is time to set the knife free to let it do what it does best! Through lectures, demonstrations and specific assignments in this workshop I will show you ways to use a variety of painting knives to achieve marks, passages, edges and forms in both additive and subtractive methods. The workshop will reinforce an understanding of composition and form and will also explore methods to break up and strip down the subject, then reconstruct it in new and surprising ways. (Oh, and we will allow some of those pretentious brushes in too, so don’t fret.) https://douglasfryer.blogspot.com/
Douglas Fryer
Douglas Fryer was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, and was raised in Illinois and California. In 1988 he received his BFA in Illustration from Brigham Young University, Provo, UT. He later returned to BYU for further study toward and MFA in Painting and Drawing, and received his MFA in 1995. Fryer has taught fine art and illustration at several universities and art schools, including Brigham Young University; the University of Hartford, Hartford, Connecticut; the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York City, New York; and Snow College, Ephraim, Utah. He currently lives and works in the small community of Spring City, located in beautiful Sanpete Valley in central Utah.
“Art reveals the evidence of one’s life; in observing and creating the artist discovers themes that are the the makeup of his character, and perpetuates the making and sharing of experience. I create images that become material records of places, things and people that have been significant to me. Often, as I paint them they become significant to me in a different way: aesthetically, conceptually, and spiritually. There is a state of existence that lies between one’s physical and spiritual state, the present and the past, the reality and the symbol or impression. It is while I am in this frame of mind that life and the world seem the most clear and meaningful. It is to this state that I desire to return, and painting is one of the avenues through which I can regain and expand those feelings.”