Hommage to Fatin-Latour
Artist (s): Mr. Leech, Mary Guarrasi, Kianna Grant, Rebecca Skerbach
Location in school: Guidance Office. Student Services
Year completed: 2010
Rationale / Description:
This painting marks the first large scale mural ever executed by Maxwell Heights art students. It is also the first collaboration between the Visual Art Department and another Department within the school. One of our long range goals behind the Maxwell mural project is to highlight areas or departments within the school and install site specific artworks, to help define, promote and communicate the core values of academic disciplines. Our Guidance department would be the first to receive a new installation.
We connected with the teachers and support staff in Student Services and eagerly discussed possible outcomes with the Department Head; Rose Retcinas. We learned how our Guidance department works tirelessly to assist and council students from Maxwell every day, and so this had to be a consideration when planning the work. We also had to consider the student population that uses Guidance on a daily basis; they were numerous, diverse, in a hurry, and sometimes upset and the work would be conceived with these factors in mind. After some discussion with the student painters, It was decided that we would create an image of beauty, tranquility, fragility and endurance.
As source material, and inspiration for the work, we chose one of the great painters of the late eighteenth century, Henri Fantin-Latour. He produced stunning modern works of still life, portraiture and allegory that pleased the Royal Academy of France while still delighting the Modernist avante garde to which Latour belonged. He was a student of history who helped define the emerging art of the 20th century. A leading figure in the Aesthetic Movement, he mixed it up with leading thinkers, poets, musicians and academics. His art was an art that aspired to achieve an abstract pictorial harmony. The visual elements carefully arranged, adjusted, and modeled to create an image free from external narrative influence. An expression of pure pictorial beauty, an art for arts sake.
We would paint a flower picture in his manner, one monumental in scale, splendid in colour, and diverse in its complexity of form.
Location in school: Guidance Office. Student Services
Year completed: 2010
Rationale / Description:
This painting marks the first large scale mural ever executed by Maxwell Heights art students. It is also the first collaboration between the Visual Art Department and another Department within the school. One of our long range goals behind the Maxwell mural project is to highlight areas or departments within the school and install site specific artworks, to help define, promote and communicate the core values of academic disciplines. Our Guidance department would be the first to receive a new installation.
We connected with the teachers and support staff in Student Services and eagerly discussed possible outcomes with the Department Head; Rose Retcinas. We learned how our Guidance department works tirelessly to assist and council students from Maxwell every day, and so this had to be a consideration when planning the work. We also had to consider the student population that uses Guidance on a daily basis; they were numerous, diverse, in a hurry, and sometimes upset and the work would be conceived with these factors in mind. After some discussion with the student painters, It was decided that we would create an image of beauty, tranquility, fragility and endurance.
As source material, and inspiration for the work, we chose one of the great painters of the late eighteenth century, Henri Fantin-Latour. He produced stunning modern works of still life, portraiture and allegory that pleased the Royal Academy of France while still delighting the Modernist avante garde to which Latour belonged. He was a student of history who helped define the emerging art of the 20th century. A leading figure in the Aesthetic Movement, he mixed it up with leading thinkers, poets, musicians and academics. His art was an art that aspired to achieve an abstract pictorial harmony. The visual elements carefully arranged, adjusted, and modeled to create an image free from external narrative influence. An expression of pure pictorial beauty, an art for arts sake.
We would paint a flower picture in his manner, one monumental in scale, splendid in colour, and diverse in its complexity of form.