Today I did a workshop at oko.academy, which is a small studio in Prague focused on painting. The workshop was called “let’s paint a cat “ which is a bit of a sarcastic take on these painting classes with a clear objective like painting a cabin in the woods or mountains. So in this case. We all painted cats, but I also spoke about the importance of choosing a simple subject for your work. Often times those studying painting, at least those i’ve encountered in Prague doing so, will complicate the process too much with jargon and complicated conceptual ideas. These can of course app be explored, however I believe that for a painting to be read clearly, there also needs to be a clear subject. For instance I do a lot of portraits, and people can easily read these as portraits. However I can also imbibe these paintings with all sorts of other conceptual ideas about what portraiture means and how to make a portrait in the 21st century. It gives the work an immediate lineage and history. So, when we all painted cats at the Oko Academy, we also spoke about their other artistic work and tried to focus on their subject matter. So in essence, what is the cat in their own work?
I also made this little zine I gave to students as well