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| It was the serendipitous meeting of a man named George Sotos, a former teacher at the American Academy of Chicago, that took my studies in a new direction. |
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1983–1986: Art education moves to Cocoa beach, Florida
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| In 1983, I left New York to study privately with Mr. Sotos and three other students. Under the direction of Mr. Sotos we created a very unique artistic learning environment. |
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| The basic concept of visual vocabulary |
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| The study centered on one overall concept: the development of the perception of space (learning to see) using the skeleton as the vehicle. Whereas the traditional approach to drawing used geometrical shapes (sphere, cone, cube, cylinder) to interpret a complex form, we were attempting to open a faculty of perception to “see” form directly. The “scale” that we employed, in lieu of the geometric shapes, was the organic shape of the sacrum (the triangular bone at the base of the spine). The “scale” or “vocabulary” that we were after had less to do with the fact that it was the sacrum, and more to do with that it presented a uniform but staggeringly complex form that, in theory, if committed to memory, had the ablility to open advanced spacial perception. |
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 The text below relates to the images in the slide show. |
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Drawing using solely the sense of touch.
Using
large hollowed out sectional papier mache’ forms of the “sacral horizontals” we performed several exercises.
Reverse Drawing: One exercise was feeling the form of the horizontal from the inside with one hand, by stroking it, while drawing (what we felt) with the other. We called this “Reverse Drawing”, without the use of our eyes to interpret the form. This unconventional process was a mind bender and it took a while to get the hang of it. This exercise opened up a whole world in the imagination, as the hand learned what it was feeling. Read more...
See images 4, 10, 11, of slide show
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Building the complete skeleton
The sacrum work “stretched” spacial perception of volume. Our logical progression was to imbed the 3-D image of the skeleton. It involved building every bone over and over one by one, then in combinations, leading to the whole. This process took many months to master. At the end, we were able to put it all together and build an entire skeleton from memory. This was quite a thrilling accomplishment.
See images 1, 2, 3, and 6 of slide show
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Drawings exercises of the bones and skeleton
We made many large scale drawings of the bones of the skeleton, skull, and the full skeleton on a daily basis from memory. The memory work reinforced what we knew well, and made apparent where we were weak. These were not drawings with a light source. We were laying lines to create form, from back to front (as if transparent) in order to “feel” or perceive 3D form on a flat surface. After many months, we definitely felt our perception of space change. The flat surface is not as inflexible as it appears to be!
See image 7 of slide show |
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Oil painting, color and geometry
By 1986, our work evolved to include more and more time oil painting. We read books on color, made color charts, and did many painting exercises using a full-color palette, a limited palette, a monochrome palette, as well as a black and white palette for value studies.
To practice geometry and proportion, we made an in-depth study of a complex geometrical form, such as a large metal hand crank grain grinder. First we built it out of clay, then we plotted its lines on paper using a traditional perspective technique, which then led us to make a detailed oil painting of it. We also took a few local classes on printmaking, and stained glass.
Later on, I began to paint plein-air, loading my bike up with my equipment, trekking up and down the beach painting the Cocoa Beach landscape. See images (13 to 25) of the slide show. |
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| Painting a Florida landscape, 1986 |
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| Out for a day of plein-air painting. |
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| Wrapping up the florida study |
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We packed an amazing amount of study and work into four years. It was a very special time in my life and I feel grateful for having had that rare opportunity. However, the scope of what we were attempting went beyond our ability to stay with it. In December 1986, the school disbanded, because of lack of funds. It was an abrupt interruption to an amazing journey. I loved the work and I miss the beach.
Although I really worked hard and was filled with passion, at 26, I was naive to some of the realities ahead that I was about to face beyond art school. |
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| To this day, I remain in awe of the courage of Mr. Sotos, in his conviction, to go dramatically against the prevailing sentiment on how one learns to draw, to boldly attempt a completely new angle. We (students) helped to pioneer what Sotos coined as “Visual Vocabulary”. Mr. Soto's is now back to text in Chicago teaching students at his studio The Drawing Workshop. |
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