Composition 101 Dynamism - How to Create Art with Movement Energy, by Rob the Art Teacher

There are many ways that all the stuff in a picture can be organised. Whether it’s people in a history painting. Hills, trees, rivers, and fields in a landscape or a seaside scene. Or items in a still life picture. Or a person and their surroundings in a figure study or a portrait. Over time, artists have learned lots of options for organising where things go, to create a total picture that conveys the energy and mood they want, the feelings that suit their theme. In this video, I break down the picture-making menu for DYNAMIC compositions.
A WORD ABOUT MY SELECTION OF ARTIST EXEMPLARS:
I am making this video lesson during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by russia. Since 24 February 2022 I have been making daily posts on social media featuring a new Ukrainian artist every day, including historical figures, artists who have been wrongly identified as russian, and living artists. The responses of people have been stunning, indicating that many people are not aware of the depth and diversity of Ukraine’s art history and art scene. In this video I have used the stunning artworks of 14 historic and contemporary Ukrainian artists whose work suits my teaching theme. Perhaps there will be some surprises for you - for instance, did you know that Kazymyr Malevych, often referred to as a russian artist, was Ukrainian? And that Sonia Delaunay who spent so much of her career in Paris that she became known as a French artist, was also Ukrainian? Then there are the two extraordinary, early twentieth century avant-garde artists Aleksandra Ekster (Belarusian father and Greek mother and lived and worked in Kyiv) and Vadym Meller who were little-known outside of Eastern Europe, and many others.
ARTISTS IN THIS VIDEO:
Aleksandra Ekster (Ukrainian)
Alexander Archipenko (Ukrainian)
Alice Herbst (Sweden)
Anna Sarvira (Ukrainian)
Antonina Ivanova (Ukrainian)
Eugène Boudin (French)
Fernand Henri Léger (French)
Frank Stella (USA)
Giorgio Morandi (Italian)
Hagesandros, Athenedoros, and Polydoros (Greek, ca.200 BCE)
Hendrik Kerstens (Dutch)
Hryhorii Havrylenko (Ukrainian)
Issachar Ber Ryback (Ukrainian)
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (French)
Jean Louis Théodore Géricault (French)
John Bokor (Australian)
Kazymyr Malevych (Ukrainian)
Megan Galante (USA)
Mykola Kryvenko (Ukrainian)
Nikita Tsoy (Ukrainian)
Oleksandr Bohomazov (Ukrainian)
Petrus van der Velden (Dutch)
Pietro Perugino (Italian)
Sonia Delaunay (Ukrainian)
Vadym Meller (Ukrainian)
Vincent van Gogh (Dutch)
Wayne Thiebaud (USA)
Yaroslav Motiki (Ukrainian)
Yitshak Frenkel-Frenel (Ukrainian)
MUSIC:
This video uses the music “Wandering Soul” by Asher Fulero, from TH-cam Audio Library
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Rob Garrett is an accomplished art teacher, writer, and contemporary art curator. With fine art and art history degrees from leading New Zealand Universities, he is a certified art teacher with 45 years’ experience teaching art to all ages, having worked in primary/elementary schools, high schools, and higher education art schools, including time as the Head of New Zealand’s oldest art school, the Dunedin School of Art (founded in 1870). He is currently teaching the art program at The American Elementary School in Gdynia, Poland. He has also had the honour of senior public service in New Zealand, first in a governance role as Council member with New Zealand’s national arts council ‘Creative New Zealand’, and then as the senior manager for national pan-arts development in the same organisation. His national and international work for and with artists has included initiating and administering artist residency programmes, artists’ wage/labour rights advocacy, managing New Zealand’s presence at the 2005 Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art, and curating numerous contemporary art exhibitions, public space festivals, artist commissions, and city-wide public art programs in New Zealand and Poland.