Folk art

Folk Art

Sohyun.Park (Sso)

Follow the Wikipedia, Folk Art encompasses art produced from an indigenous culture or by peasants or other laboring trade’s people. In contrast to folk art is primarily utilitarian and decorative rather than purely aesthetic. In my opinion, folk art reflects traditional thing such as person’s life, history and culture.

In museum, we can see Theora Hamblett’s painting and Gee’s Bend Quilts. In this museum, Theora Hamblett’s theme is “season”, so every four wall represents the four seasons. Theora Hamblett almost always draws lovely children, country scene, religious things and vision. Why she draws like this? Once she was a teacher, so she really likes the kids and she loves walking in the country side. Also she believes Christian religion, so the theme of her painting is like this. Vision is same reason.

Pointillism is her favorite drawing technique. Pointillism is a technique of neo-Impressionist painting using tiny dots of carious pure colors, which become blended in the viewer’s eye. She also layers the paint. For example, the bottom of the canvas she paints the bright yellow colors and layers dark yellow, bright green and dark green one by one. I mean she paints her art from bright color to dark color. She also uses the color of tree such as purple, orange, yellow and green. It sounds weird, but she did.

When we see her painting, we can recognize that everything is flat. As you know, there are no flat things in the world, but she wants to the people’s focus in the middle, not the bottom. For this reason, she also paints the bottom with wide green brush. I think it works.

Gee’s Bend Quilts are also impressed to me. She made some kinds of bed cover and blanket by quilting. Quilting refers to the technique of joining at least two fabric layers by stitches or ties. So she used flower socks, fabric and various kinds of flags. Other words, she made the quilt including everything.

In museum, I really interested to all art works since it was represented the situation at that time such as religions, war and so on. Also I could know about how to draw, what kind of material when artist use and what the background of this art is. The most important things I learn to go to the museum, I can learn these two artists’ life through their art works.