The Art Academy Years

1972 - 1974

I used to say that there were “only” a handful of painting majors in my class, but now marvel that there were any at all. It was the times. Everyone worked large. I think it was an expression of our “wanna be a famous artist” egos. We built our own stretchers. Stretched our own canvas. It was a very “take charge of your life” kind of creative time and place in which we thought anything was possible. It was like we were living a movie, and the building itself, being connected to the museum, driving through Eden Park every morning, it was all part of the dream.

There is very little information on the Art Academy slides when it comes to titles, dates or dimensions. Titles never really came into play as I was always working from life, just learning how to paint. They are all still-life paintings or self-portraits. I’ll take a pretty accurate guess on sizes, just so that you can see if it is a large painting or not.