Our Years 10 and 11 art classes recently visited the Geelong Gallery for an enriching cultural excursion to view the exclusive Discovering the Impressionists exhibition.
By all accounts, the students had a wonderful time exploring rare masterpieces sourced from private collections in France, including artworks never before exhibited in Australia. Viewing iconic pieces by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot and Camille Pissarro up close offered our student artists an invaluable learning experience.
Students observed the true scale, vibrant colour mixing, and distinctive brushwork these artworks contained, helping to provide rich inspiration for students' practical work and creative development.
In analysing these historical artworks firsthand, students' critical evaluation skills and cultural understanding were strengthened, holding them in good stead for future artwork.
We are confident our Year 10 and 11 cohorts returned with renewed creative energy to apply to their upcoming art classes and creations!
Indie Waddell and Mimi Wadling, Year 10 VCE Unit 2 Art Making & Exhibiting students, give their reflection below:
The VCE Unit 2 Art Making & Exhibiting and MYP4 Visual Art excursion to the Geelong Art Gallery to observe the Impressionists exhibition featured a collection of artworks from the Paul Durand-Ruel collection and allowed our classes to discover a range of French Impressionist artists from the nineteenth century. It was very interesting to be able to walk around the different rooms and discover new techniques as well as see how the artists painted ‘en plein air’. It was enjoyable to be able to quickly sketch and annotate the artworks as to how we perceived them. We think it really assisted our understanding of the art movement to see the artworks in relation to each other and in person, expanding our knowledge even further. The hero piece in the exhibition was likely to be ‘Rough Weather at Etretat’ by Claude Monet, because it showed lots of emotion and how the iImpressionist artists focused on landscapes and movement.
A stand out art work for me (Indie) was ‘Autumn afternoon’ by Georges d’Espagnat because I loved how it had a variety of colours, texture and form, giving the artwork a sense of peace and quietness. The flowers show connection and it really represents nature’s beauty. I am inspired to provide these elements in my future artwork to reflect more emotion, more vibrance and to make my artwork give a sense of unity.
The stand out for me (Mimi) was the oil painting of ‘Paul Gobillard In Her Ball Gown’ by Berthe Morisot, it stood out to me because I like how you can see the use of brush strokes to create detail and make shadows within the subject matter, as well as the pale cool tones the artist used. I also enjoyed looking at the expression on the woman's face and trying to understand what the emotion the artist was trying to convey. I’m inspired to experiment with these skills and characteristics that Morisot has shown and reflect it in my own art works.
