Art Show judge teaches abstract painting workshop
Marilyn Brown dabbed her brush into the yellow acrylic paint and then swabbed the glowing pigment onto a nebulous field of orange.
Brown and other painters were participating in Emilio Abugarade's workshop "Abstract Expressions" at the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art Educational Annex. Abugarade, a visiting artist from Saltillo, Coahuila, Mexico, had already judged the 38th International Art Show at the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art on March 4, and he stayed to teach the course March 9-13.
"I find these people are very enthusiastic, and they are very excited about trying a new way of painting, and I hope to help them as much as I can," said Abugarade.
Student Cathy Lynch slowly, meticulously pressed a line of deep cobalt blue into the painting, stricken with jagged shreds of color scratching into the canvas. The horizon seemed to force its way onto the scene, poised over a quavering bottomless sky of flashing yellow and orange. Another piece showed a yellow and white supernova peering into the storm of violet screaming across empty space.
Meanwhile, streaks of yellow flowered across Brown's painting like some amorphous dream when one plunges into the starlit bloom of sleep, reeling topsy-turvy across the calamitous landscape of the subconscious. She had several works in progress.
"This one I am going to do a grid on," said the 73-year-old Brown about another piece. "I have already drawn the grid and now I am going to paint it with different shapes on the grid."
Abugarade stopped and spoke to Ruth Freeman, another student, about a painting with broad orange and yellow panels.
"This could be two forces here," he told her.
"Should this be more orange down here?" asked Freeman.
"No," replied the instructor. "More yellow to make this show in here."
She and the other students followed patterns propped on a wall before them: an amoeba-like shape wandering, stretching its inclinations with liquid spontaneity. Lines reaching haphazardly from one side to the other comprised another pattern, and an arrangement titled "Directional" depicted bands of oblong, uneven shadow stretching from top to bottom. In "Radial Form, Central Core," lines spun from the sides toward a groaning vortex like a burst of imagination forming into a current of energy.
"The abstract way of painting is establishing a structure in their work, to have colors and shapes for holding together," Abugarade said. "They are starting several projects and we are going to finish them."
Sometimes, he pointed out, artists must set aside paintings for a while before returning to work on them further.
"They have to rework them," he said. "And you have a rain of thoughts for doing the best option."
Abugarade's collages of tissue paper and magazines stood against the back wall behind the patterns the students studied. Patches of pale blue surrounded a window with reddish brown providing glimpses of green trees outside, while languid gray fell from a more vibrant green heaving to the surface. Another work depicted shreds of frantic yellow seeking purpose as it crawled about a cross of turquoise blue, chunks of cream-colored stucco and deep violet. Still another piece revealed flaming orange squares against shades of violet, apparitions ascending and then dissipating into silence.
"I want people to read what I did there, to read the painting and to understand what is in there that I am trying to communicate," he said.
Abugarade said that he could paint for hours without tiring, even if he's standing.
"Since I was a child, I liked to be coloring," Abugarade recalled. "I asked my parents to buy me colors. All the time I was making shapes and figures. A relative always told me, ‘Stop drawing and concentrate on mathematics.' My mathematics notebook was always filled with houses and trees."
He has created in a broad range of styles. In 1998, he said, he participated in an art show that included a substantial amount of abstract art.
"I became more contemporary," he said. "Young people enjoy more abstract. I was trying to get young people's attention. Abstract is so rich. It's all in your mind, so you can go as far as your imagination drives you. It gives you the chance to establish a little dialogue between the painting and your mind, because you imagine things."
The workshop was held at the same location where art classes are held each Wednesday. However, that building will soon become unavailable, and the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art Working Artist's Council is looking for a new location to hold classes. Anyone interested in offering new space should call the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art at 542-0941.
