Please describe a work of art you have experienced that deeply impressed you. What features of this work of art (book, piece of music, film, painting, etc.) made it so powerful?
The dreaded question ^^ I still need about two hundred words added to make the required number. Any suggestions for additions? and with everything else of course. Thanks!
One of the first paintings I ever fell in love with was Van Gogh's Starry Night. Though I had little knowledge of great artists when I was in elementary school, a copy of Van Gogh's famous painting displayed on the art room wall was one of the first things I associated with great art.
It was the exposure to Starry Night that opened up my eyes to a world of artistic interpretation. A night sky was not simply a blue-black drape, pin-pricked with light. It was a myriad of colors and shapes, which in its own way, captured what was real.
Starry Night depicts the small village of Saint Remy under a swirling sky, with one of Van Gogh's characteristic cypress trees in the foreground. What particularly attracts me about this painting is the movement in the sky. One wouldn't typically think of a sky as having movement, yet Van Gogh makes it seem as though the light that radiated from stars causes the entire sky to dance. The paint is thickly layered on the canvas, every shad of blue imaginable fanned across the surface. The small, dashed strokes of his paintbrush, atypical to the usual smooth strokes often used by artists, leap across the surface in graceful arcs. Out of something entirely ordinary to our everyday lives, Van Gogh created something timelessly beautiful.
An artist's true power is his style; this is what sets him apart from others. There are many talented painters who could paint a perfect replication of a night sky over a little village in France. It is Van Gogh's unconventional interpretation, however, that advanced his painting to be hailed as a masterpiece.
Van Gogh's style has inspired me, as a painter, to develop my own artistic interpretation of the world. Unlike a photograph, which only captures a scene, a painting can immortalize passion. The goal of art is not to reproduce what lies before you, but to capture your own feeling towards the subject in your art. When I paint, if often takes me days to decide upon my subject, and the direction from which I will approach it. I have to think about the colors I want to bring out in my painting, and the emotions those colors will provoke. I had to think about the heaviness of my hand, the size of my brush, the detail I might include, the movement I may gesture. And all of this amounts to something that is distinctly me.
Starry Night made a distinct impression on me from the first time I laid eyes on it, and continues to serve as an artistic reference in the back of my mind today. Van Gogh's genius reminds me that I must find myself through my painting to be a true artist.
This is a very good essay, description and all. I personally would not destroy the content of the essay in order to make it meet the word requirement. If it is not mandatory then I believe your professor would perfer a well written essay over an essay that meets the number requirement.
First of all, I agree with reader about the word count requirement.
Second, I can feel your passion in your words. That Van Gogh painting made me cry the first time I saw it. it still moves me, as it has obviously moved you. In this essay, you have expressed that very well.
