Self-Interrogations: Abstract Painting Critiques with Josh Goldberg
JAN 28 - FEB 25 2025, 12-2 pm (EST)
Session Dates: Tuesdays, Jan 28, Feb 4, 11, 18 and 25 2025
FIVE Session Online Workshop (All sessions will be held via Zoom)
Each abstract painter is capable of grasping the inner complexities of their work. However, deeply articulating what they are seeing requires guidance and practice.
The question asked in this class will be:
How do we look inwardly at what we perceive outwardly?
Participants will be taken through a variety of interpretative and exploratory models for self-interrogation from which realistic judgments of their work can be based. Each participant’s work will be treated as a boundary to explore a variety of issues as well as a potential threshold to cross with a new model of looking and seeing.
Over the course of the workshop, students will bring a different painting or the same painting to each weekly session. Students will talk about their work: a work in progress or a completed work; issues with the work; an unresolved work or how a work was resolved. Working with exploratory and interpretative models for self-criticism from which realistic judgments can be based, participants will learn to:
Look at their work inwardly at what they perceive outwardly. They will learn the basics of the inner complexity behind the pretext of the surface of their work.
Take themselves to unexplored authentic places of emboldened creativity.
Love and work through the so-called chaos (“splish-splash”) of the painting process.
Break open the surface of a composition, how to value without self-judgment, how to subvert oneself and to nurture doubt.
Each session will follow a three-part structure:
Brief introductory remarks by the instructor
Critique and discussion of student work
End of Class Readings
JAN 28 - FEB 25 2025, 12-2 pm (EST)
Session Dates: Tuesdays, Jan 28, Feb 4, 11, 18 and 25 2025
FIVE Session Online Workshop (All sessions will be held via Zoom)
Each abstract painter is capable of grasping the inner complexities of their work. However, deeply articulating what they are seeing requires guidance and practice.
The question asked in this class will be:
How do we look inwardly at what we perceive outwardly?
Participants will be taken through a variety of interpretative and exploratory models for self-interrogation from which realistic judgments of their work can be based. Each participant’s work will be treated as a boundary to explore a variety of issues as well as a potential threshold to cross with a new model of looking and seeing.
Over the course of the workshop, students will bring a different painting or the same painting to each weekly session. Students will talk about their work: a work in progress or a completed work; issues with the work; an unresolved work or how a work was resolved. Working with exploratory and interpretative models for self-criticism from which realistic judgments can be based, participants will learn to:
Look at their work inwardly at what they perceive outwardly. They will learn the basics of the inner complexity behind the pretext of the surface of their work.
Take themselves to unexplored authentic places of emboldened creativity.
Love and work through the so-called chaos (“splish-splash”) of the painting process.
Break open the surface of a composition, how to value without self-judgment, how to subvert oneself and to nurture doubt.
Each session will follow a three-part structure:
Brief introductory remarks by the instructor
Critique and discussion of student work
End of Class Readings
JAN 28 - FEB 25 2025, 12-2 pm (EST)
Session Dates: Tuesdays, Jan 28, Feb 4, 11, 18 and 25 2025
FIVE Session Online Workshop (All sessions will be held via Zoom)
Each abstract painter is capable of grasping the inner complexities of their work. However, deeply articulating what they are seeing requires guidance and practice.
The question asked in this class will be:
How do we look inwardly at what we perceive outwardly?
Participants will be taken through a variety of interpretative and exploratory models for self-interrogation from which realistic judgments of their work can be based. Each participant’s work will be treated as a boundary to explore a variety of issues as well as a potential threshold to cross with a new model of looking and seeing.
Over the course of the workshop, students will bring a different painting or the same painting to each weekly session. Students will talk about their work: a work in progress or a completed work; issues with the work; an unresolved work or how a work was resolved. Working with exploratory and interpretative models for self-criticism from which realistic judgments can be based, participants will learn to:
Look at their work inwardly at what they perceive outwardly. They will learn the basics of the inner complexity behind the pretext of the surface of their work.
Take themselves to unexplored authentic places of emboldened creativity.
Love and work through the so-called chaos (“splish-splash”) of the painting process.
Break open the surface of a composition, how to value without self-judgment, how to subvert oneself and to nurture doubt.
Each session will follow a three-part structure:
Brief introductory remarks by the instructor
Critique and discussion of student work
End of Class Readings
About Josh Goldberg
Josh Goldberg was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He attended the Tyler School of Fine Arts, Michigan State University, California State University, UCLA, and the University of Arizona, to earn degrees in studio art, art history, and Japanese language and literature. In addition to experimenting with various techniques in art, he began a serious study of Chinese and Japanese art, Zen and Buddhism, which eventually took him to Japan on a fellowship.
Exhibitions of Josh’s works include large-scale, abstract paintings in acrylic and oils, oversized works on paper, large charcoal drawings, and prints. Josh Goldberg is also a poet, translator, essayist, and book critic. He has written a number of books such as A Beggar at the Door: Longer and Shorter Psalms, Eight Beggars: Concatenating Verses of Separation and Repair, and the latest A Thousand-and-One Nights & Twenty-Four Days.
You can see his work on his website: joshgoldbergart.com
TESTIMONIALS
“Josh is an extraordinary teacher. It is rare to find in the same person the creative talent of a painter united to the talent and necessary courage for teaching.”
- Former student
“A true Zen master.”
- Jose B.
“[Goldberg’s] giant paintings take art back to the basics: they are above all about color and texture and composition…Loyal abstractionist, Goldberg has tempered the austere beauty of his paint with a couple of rough found objects, a piece of tin, a square of black linoleum, a grainy rood shingle…”
- Tucson Weekly
“Seeing a Josh Goldberg painting is like listening to a major full-orchestra composition, everything from subtle transitions to dramatic shifts in rhythm coupled with intense feeling, brilliant illusion and finished in an elegant, powerful hand – a tour de force of modern Abstract Expressionism.”
- Mike Dominguez, Davis Dominguez Gallery