Intro Week One - Intro Essay

Dear Professor Brew,

I am very overwhelmed with amazement at the illustrations and information found in our course textbook. I thoroughly enjoyed our first reading assignment, Chapter 4 entitled, "Living With Art" by Mark Getlein. However, it was a great amount of knowledge to read and digest. It is under Part Two: The Vocabulary of Art, entitled, The Visual Elements and it describes the following: line, shape, mass, light, value, color, texture, and space as the essential elements the artists use, along with variations to depict motion, depth, mass, etc. to the work of art. Also, it serves as a supplement in order to communicate his inner feelings which involve evoking an emotional connection with viewers in many locations such as, private galleries, museums, town squares, or government office buildings, and private residences, of course. It would be fun and very interesting to attend our class field trip to the National Museum in Washington, D.C. on March 31, 2007. I am quite certain that an on-site visit would be in order by then. Knowledge of these basic elements will help us appreciate what the artist has created, even if our individual perceptions or interpretations of what we see may not be the same. Artistic perception usually differs from their audience especially when one individual may have circumstances which are different from that of another, even twins. This is where the use of other artistic components like style and medium are very critical in expressing or communicating how an artist decides to complete his final work, or series.

Peace,
Gwendolyn Lane