Glenn Hirsch, Instructor www.glennhirsch.com

1. Final Crit
Paint Intermediate
UC Berkeley Extension Spring 2016
Glenn Hirsch, Instructor

2. Abigail Drapkin
Double Exposures
Movement, memory, and transparency
Multiple exposures condense moments into a single ghostly image. In
each painting, gestures in oil on wood leave slick traces of movement,
translucent limbs capturing the ephemeral, selective nature of
memory. Muted and subdued with hints of saturation, the colors
recall stained glass with overlapping figures forming geometric
shapes.
The surreal comes into play when transparent bodies fade into the
background and a girl appears to have four arms and two heads.
I draw from Alex Kanevsky and Robert Birmelin. My lonesome figures
speak to Edward Hopper, revealing the beauty in the ordinary.

17. Angela Hunkler
This artist thinks and dreams in colors; she was raised on a farm in North Dakota
and so often portrays the colors (such as purple iris, red feathers on my
mythological birds and blues of the sky near dawn) of the seasons, birds and the
life and death cycles course through her work.
She adores Kathe Kollowitz, Paul Klee, Corita Kent and Leonard Baskin as constant
expressionistic models; often for the intense spiritual underpinnings of their
sometimes unpopular renderings of human nature.
Color is starting to come back to her paintings more vigorously with a pastel-like
underpainting of some color. This artist tends to paint with whatever tools her
imagination and meditation brings to her; birds of life and death and just taking
some botanical plants from her fertile mind of her gardening expertise. Mixed
media is often her forte; this term she mostly concentrated on oils with a gift from
a friend. It has opened up for the moment much in the line of going from light to
dark and dark to light; both are worthy venues for me (black is such a pregnant
creative color).
She loves series as with oils one needs to wait anyway and this allows the creative
process to lie fallow and then proceed on with the mood of the moment with
scattering of the seeds for the planting of various vegetation or simply non-
representational art.

24. Colin Dunne
I am drawn to the isolation and the danger of driving and the uglier pieces of our infrastructure. The huge
concrete structures that dominate our landscapes. I try and create clear and succinct images that tell a
story and communicate the tension of urban life and the danger we routinely and absentmindedly place
ourselves in each day. I work primarily in water colour and acrylic and occasionally make mixed media
pieces. I am drawn to greys and blacks and the colours at the cooler end of the spectrum. I am inspired by
the starkness of the paintings of Franz Kline and the kineticism of the installations of Chris Burden.
My latest series concerns automobiles and highways, with an emphasis on overpasses and how weather
affects these massive concrete structures that dominate our landscapes and sever ground level
connections within the city. These ugly structures. Weather-stained and rusty. Crumbling and hastily
patched. Breathtaking in their size and in their massive weight.
They are monuments to our own ingenuity and, most importantly, monuments to the automobile. They
are the ultimate sign that the modern city was built to be driven over rather than lived in. Yet they are also
monuments to our hubris. Concrete does not age gracefully and weather chews inexorably away at it. Day
by day, eroding it. Growing up around the Great Lakes, I learned that it only takes a little bit of snow and
some wind to turn these structures of convenience into death traps.
I want the viewer to feel the snow and the wind. To be reminded of that all too familiar moment: that
moment on the highway when the best, most reasonable part of you whispers “you shouldn’t be doing
this.”

32. Jennifer Hearing
The Owls
One came into the world in the caul on the full moon eclipse. One emerged
slowly, silently, in her own sweet time. And one entered quickly, desperately
clinging to all he knew. My three little owls, magical. From the start, each
so unique, individual. My inspirations - so creative, such teachers, so wise
with youth, inter-connected to the universe, wild + free.
Like the vibrance + individuality of children, these owls represent this
unique, mystical presence and innate wisdom, often masked by a wild +
carefree nature. Each picture is interconnected, the whole, not one without
the other. Van Gogh’s brush and the monochromatic color reminiscent of
Rothko channel their essence.

40. Vermeer study and response

42. Jessica Orme
I love the challenge of painting portraits. The human face is endlessly
interesting and nuanced. Working from photographs, I notice more
detail each time I look at them. What at first looks like an unvaried
field of one color and value becomes full of many subtle variations? It
is fun to play with color and experiment with transparent layers upon
layers.
The representational faces are painted without concern for matching
colors to reality. Acrylic paints completely cover the canvas. Smooth
surfaces show visible brushwork. Many glazes over a blue and white
underpainting. Skin is a colorful combination of red, blue, yellow,
blue, purple, and white.
Art has always been a part of my life. Both of my parents have always
created art. Like my dad, I love to paint portraits. Like my mom, I am
not overly concerned with reality. I am in awe of the technique of the
old masters such as Van Eyck and Rembrandt, the passion of Van
Gogh, and the somber beauty of Mark Demsteader's portraits.

44. Study of Thomas
Eakins and response

48. Lawrence Lagin
Sacrifice by Fire
Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning “sacrifice by fire.”
I painted this series after seeing photographs in the Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., where I was particularly
struck by the children who I felt were calling to me to tell their
story.
The work is done with limited palette to convey sorrow, and with
sketchy lines and brash strokes to convey the energy and strong
emotion of the subject - much in the style of my favorite artists,
Lautrec and Van Gogh.
I know that this is very sad and I found it difficult to do. I hope
that I showed the respect that these beautiful souls deserve.

54. Study of Renoir and response

56. Liz Berg
Stone Walls and Life Circles
My work can best be characterized as using bold colors coupled with line and shape brought
together to form pleasing compositions. It is usually non-objective in its abstract formation.
I work intuitively and spontaneously most of the time, although I usually have a clear idea of
where I want the piece to go. I particularly enjoy incorporating multiple levels of depth to my
work, bringing one in closer and closer to see more detail.
Each piece is open to one's individual discovery and interpretation.
Light purples, deep purples, various shades of browns and neutrals, a smattering of green
and orange, toned and subdued – except for the orange. Weather eroded sandstone hills.
Amethyst covered in grime fill the square in a style like Paul Klee, innocent and free
August, Celebration Set, Creation Day, Geese in the Streamers, July, June, Life circles 5, 6, 7, 8
- Purple Sun and a sea star.
Stone walls, individual hand carved stones carefully placed to create something more
substantial that the individual stones. Violets, oranges, scarlet, mauve, recollections of
verges, colors seen in nature but more subdued and quiet, speaking of strength and
integrity, holding walls, holding bridges, making fences.
Interlocking shapes, lines moving easily amongst them, colors free to associate with each
other.

61. Lyndsay Erickson
Dance on Wood
This series finds its heart with a palette knife on panel. The wood grain
shows through crimson, scarlet, pink, vermillion, alizarin, thalo green and
iridescent yellow. These paintings have a restless “wind” that blows
through each picture in a dance both wild and still. The movement of
Degas' dancers and horses, the complex composition of Diebenkorn, the
energy and color of Matisse.
The work is improvised and remains unadjusted after it’s finished. I paint
quickly and this velocity helps avoid critical voices in a grand release from
my career in finance. Art reminds us of how important it is to take action
and to be bathed in color, even if only for a moment.

64. detail

65. detail

74. Renee Kelly
Indications.
Thoughts. Feelings.
Buried in.
The Mind.
Fate.
Hidden. Unseen.
Moments lead up to.
A Time.
Life is changed forever.
But...what was life like before fate really took hold? What if that fate had never existed?
In The Prequel to Fate’s True Colors, I explore these questions by looking at a time before fate made its
full mark, before life was uncontrollably altered, leaving nothing but snapshots of a previous era. What
could things have been like if it weren’t for fate?
Opposite of how I usually work this series was created from found photos and titles based on what
those photos seemed to represent. The paintings use a combination of bright and subdued color, and
are from a pulled back third person observational position, a point of view in which the viewer is there
but not there.
Inspired in part by the work of Frida Kahlo, Rene Magritte, and Gottfried Helnwein, these paintings are
for those out there who have experienced the unrelenting hand of fate, especially those who have lived
with the sad and devastating fate of one that perhaps affected the fate of all. You are not alone.

77. Study of Gottfried Helnwein
and response

82. Sandra Schultz

83. Study of František Kupka

85. detail

87. Yi Lin Pei