New beginnings

Bogdan Luca - Querent

Every late August, a light mist appears that slowly grows into a crust of dread in my heart. This is my 13th year of teaching at OCAD U and I still dread every first class, a feeling that is only amplified by the sense of mourning that I associate with the end of summer. Even though I have more experience, every year I feel less like an expert. After more than 30 years of doing art, it seems to me ever more difficult to talk about, explain and be dogmatic about any method or approach to learning art. Art is a reflection of the life of the individual and the idiosyncratic ways in which they start to interpret and distort the fundamentals. Most good art is deviant. This makes me more curious about what students bring to the class, than interested in hearing my own voice and story. Anyway, now that the first class is done, all’s well. Everything is settled into place and we can focus on talking about art and making art.

Over the summer I have been researching ways in which I can get into mural painting. I always liked working as large as possible and I did one very exciting large mural in 2012 for Brock University for the bi centennial of the war of 1812. It was an amazing challenge to paint people and horses in their real life dimensions. Here is a picture of me in the process.

Somehow, a decade has passed and I haven’t thought about pursuing this kind of project until now but this is about to change as I have been investigating the various avenues towards doing more of these projects.

To start with, I am going to paint my first mural using spray paint next weekend, as part of Nuit Blanche/ Geary Art Crawl at 62 Geary avenue. I have never used spray paint before so this could be interesting! Am I gonna make it or is it going to be a disaster? Come by from around 5pm on Saturday September 23 and see where I will be at. If you’re a graffitti pro, come give me your tips!