Dream Team Painting
Full instructions are in the PDF I will attach. Two photographs of the painting are also in the PDF along with a narrative from the artist that explains his inspiration for the work. The paining is called "DREAM TEAM"
ASSIGNMENT
Your detailed analysis should be written in the form of a SIX page essay in APA format, where you discuss such aspects as subject, color, composition, material, scale, technique, and style.
ARTIST: MIKE CAPRON TITLE: DREAM TEAM SCALE: 15X30 Oil on Canvas
Currently showing at the "Trappings of Texas Show" at the Museum of the Big Bend in Alpine, Texas
It is a painting of 13 cowboys riding through the Chihuahuan desert of West Texas.
Give a brief introduction to the work. Include a complete visual description of the image. It requires careful and thoughtful observation, and does not require any historical background or any research. The information should also include title, artist, date, scale, medium (material), and location.
Then, write at least 1-2 paragraphs on EACH of the following:
Composition: What is the subject or narrative? How is the work organized and unified? How do your eyes move around the work, and what do you focus on?
Color: Describe the color and explain how it affects the mood of the work and how it is used to organize the composition.
Objects: What exactly is in the work? Figures? Landscape? Is it crowded or empty? Is it naturalistic or abstract, and to what degree?
Technique: Describe the brushstroke in a painting, or the particular material of a sculpture, and how the material is used or manipulated. How does the material that the artist chose contribute to the reading of the work?
Size and shape: Is the work large or small, horizontal or vertical? How does this contribute to how you read it?
In your conclusion, explain how the creative process is revealed in the work you have selected and explain how the artwork made you feel.
Narrative about the painting from the artist himself:
Some guys grow up wanting to be president of the United States. Some want to be rich. Some want to be a famous athlete. I wanted to work on the Long ><. It was my dream outfit in Texas, four hundred plus sections of prime gramma grass from the top of the Davis Mountains to the edge of the greasewood in Culbertson County; a herd of hustling hereford cows that could harvest the toughest of country; a crew of men that knew how to ride and rope. It was nearly impossible to get a job on this outfit in the 50's, 60's and
Dream Team Painting
Name:
Institution:
The piece of art is from one of the artists, Mike Capron, who hails from Texas and has had a long standing career cowboy painting. His passion for riding and roping started way back before he even joined the school system. The painting skills developed over time as he occasionally loved to color books. This particular painting is of a group of cowboys in total thirteen. Painted on a canvas with oil based paints, it comes out as very warm, due to the use of the warm colors. In the fore ground are some scattered vegetation of grass and small shrubs and vast spaces showing the bare desert soil. In the middle ground are the cowboys, with four of them dominating the front line and the rest falling little behind the four front riders.
The background lighter in color and only shows the vast plains and the light blue skies behind the cowboys. The idea of the painting and hence the name dream team, is that the painter has always had a passion for cowboy riding and roping with some of the best in the culture. All through his life he had this insatiable craze for working with a team of highly skilled cowboys. It is from this reason that the artist expresses his desires of a dream team of cowboys in one of the deserts called the Chihuahuan desert in western Texas. The painting that was probably made in the 80s is made on a horizontal paper of about one meter in length and half a meter in width (Capron, 2014). The artist has had lots of pieces on the canvas and has also worked with the oil based paintings for quite some time. This piece is one of the best that the artists has produced yet and has an in-depth theme of the expressive desires that the artist has always had since he was a young boy on the plains of Texas. It underlies the subtle aspects of a great painting where the artist has an underlying meaning to their work, whether illustrating their thoughts or someone else's on a piece of paper or canvas with several brush strokes.
Growing up in Texas, most of the activities around the artists did not strike him as interesting, much like the idea of riding a horse and being in a position to rope the cows. School to the artists had not always interested him and most of the time he spent his time coloring his books. Later one he combined his passion for color and that of riding horses, to develop such works of art as the Dream Team Painting. Back in the day he had developed some skills, although they were no match to the seasoned cowboys. Much like the rest of the cowboys in the ranches, they did not love the aspect of riding because it was the highest paying or even close, but for the sheer passion of riding. Those that worked in the Long took it very seriously and spend all their life perfecting the skills of riding and roping, as such, getting a job in the long was quite hard as the old riders did not want to leave the cowboy haven. Later the artist had the chance to ride with some of the best riders in Texas but it was after a long time. He got to work alongside such riders as Bill and his son Hal, who according to him were highly skilled. Due to the immense experience that the artist had during this period and the subsequent ones, he always had the dream of working with the perfect team of riders, especially after the riders later split and formed other groups in different locations. This is a painting that speaks of the great desires that lie on the artist's heart and mind a perfect life as a rider working with the best on the land (Capron, 2014).
A closer look at the piece reveals some elements deliberate order in the painting. The fore ground and the back ground are the illustration of the typical scenery of a Texas landscape, with the small shrubs and the dusty earth. The ground and space created in the painting is an illustration of the vast lands in the ranches, much like the artists had always wanted to explore. The cowboys are also aligned in a manner to suggest that there is some form of skill level stratification. In the middle fore ground is the leader of the group, who is brought out using vivid color and his body indicating that he much older than most of the riders. During the time that the artist had a chance to ride with some of the best riders in the ranches, there was always a cow boss and then the rest of the cowboys. The order of the cowboys in the painting is like a triangle with the back line of cowboys forming a straight line and the leader at the front and middle of the painting forming the pointed end of the triangle. In the ranches, it was common to find that a group of highly skilled herders would be put together with a some less s...