Rebekah’s Studio

“Making Your Mark” is part of an artist development workshop series developed and taught by artist-author-educator Emily McIlroy in Honolulu. I attended on July 30, and the following are my reflections. Interested persons may contact info@emilymcilroy.com to ask about future sessions.

Workshop venue

“Making Your Mark” was thought provoking and caused me to wonder how to think out of the box when making art.

In the future instead of looking at my past work to discover if I subconsciously included a mark, I plan to intentionally start creating a mark based on ideas, feelings, and themes that I am attracted to; yet going with the flow during the process and allowing for chance. Experimentation.

For many years and until recently I painted Hawaiian landscapes in oil — impressionistic representationalism in green hues. (As I write this I realize the skill of painting green has been my mark!) Injuring my wrist from the repetitive motion of applying paint to canvas (I suspect) caused me to take a rest from that activity. 3D pieces, big installation art, and manipulating fabric into fashion would take me out of my comfort zone and are three areas I might explore.

• I like the idea of working on more than one art piece simultaneously in the studio, with a mark being a unifying theme and the end result being a body of work.

• I like the notion of an exhibition that is read three ways–the overall view (such as the photographic long shot), the art works themselves (medium study), and the artist’s statement (a close up). It causes me to wonder whether it is more efficient to start with the artist’s statement before creating the art pieces.

The workshop ideas are applicable to all the arts, I feel, not only the visual arts. Pen and paper were all that were needed to make notes, but not even that was necessary as Emily McIlroy offered a complete PowerPoint presentation and accompanying handout.

The notes I made were my brief observations of my own thoughts during the four hours. The small class made for intimate discussion; I was pleasantly surprised to have already been acquainted with three others out of our total seven attendees who I met in the art world previously. The 4-hour workshop with breaks was perfect for my needs, although I did not know that going in.

Thank you, Emily McIlroy, for offering this workshop. I recommend highly these workshops to my drawing and painting students and anyone interested in elevating their particular art.

© 2017 Rebekah Luke