The paintings at the workshop were done by Mercedes Matter. She was born on 1913 and had completed her first 3 paintings at the age of 9. At first glance, these paintings look like they were scribbles and it didn’t look like art pieces to me. However as she grew older, her paintings became clearer to me. Unlike several other artists of her time period, her paintings focus mainly on visual ideas rather than realistic pictures. Ever since the invention of cameras, pictures can be taken within a click. Matters didn’t want the camera to capture pictures from a specific angle so she created her own vision of the world.
Matter enjoys painting still life objects. Her paintings were done by using bold and bright colors to attract attention. She also used different shapes, lines, textures, and shadings to tell a story just like musicians who use tunes to compose a song. One interesting painting was the table tilting piece. She painted the table in such a way that it’s nearly impossible for the camera to capture. On the titled table were fruits of all sorts. In reality, if a camera was to capture this picture, everything on the table would fall off, but from her painting, she used shapes such as triangles in such a unique way that one wouldn’t think that the objects are going to fall off.
I learned a lot from this workshop. Even though I’m a person that’s not really into art, I have to admit that the art gallery workshop was really interesting. One would find her paintings difficult to understand because they’re not simple looking, but that’s what makes her style different from other artists. Every painter’s artwork holds different stories of their own of the world and Matters made hers through 2-D painting.