Alison Stinely

Northwestern Oklahoma State University Artist Lecture series had a video lecture with Alison Stinely. This lecture was quite different that the ones I had watched before, as Stinely only focused on how she produces her works, not why she makes them or the conceptual ideas behind them.

Alison Stinely focuses mainly on the human figure - often faces and heads. She works both from life and from photo references. She uses photos mainly for expressions that models cannot feasibly hold for a length of time. Her work is very detailed oil and acrylic painting. She touched in the beginning about tight vs. loose marks. She explained to the group she was giving the lecture to how tight marks are usually made close up with the wrist, while loose drawing comes out more in pre-paintings, with tighter marks building on top of looser marks. A lot of her paintings seem very tight, which Stinely toughed on. She likes very detailed tighter works, and has been told by teachers and peers in the past to stop and not 'finish' her work. Her work from after college is a lot looser, as she purposely tried to not go overboard with the small strokes and detail in her paintings.

One think I really liked from Stinely's work is her dead animal works. She bought a pig's head from a butcher for $5, and had bird heads sent to her so she could paint them. This is similar to some paintings that I do, which is why I was interested. I also paint dead animals, and I thought her works were beautiful. She did not touch on WHY she did this, however, so my only assumption is that she wanted to draw and paint from life, as a still life piece.

I was really intrigued by one process that Stinely brough up, which included to use of shellac in her work. She starts with a thick rag paper, does a charcoal or pastel drawing, and then uses both spray shellac and brushed shellac to seal in her drawing marks. This way, she can oil paint over the drawing without tainting the paint or rubbing away the drawing. I liked the way the pieces utilizing this looked and kind of want to try this technique myself as a way of combining drawing and painting.

Stinely is also interested in glazing, the golden ratio, and mannerist painting. She uses bright "easter egg colors" in her works that she says were inspired by the pop of colors in mannerist paintings.

Some of her works that went past straight life or photo drawings were left unexplained. In some life drawings, she started flipping parts of the body, creating a slightly strange figure that was twisted in unnatural ways. I wanted to hear Stinely touch on the meanings of her pieces, especially one that I really liked, titled "Except Little Nan, Who Sits In Her Pan". (Seen below) I saw Christ symbolism, sexual symbolism, space and futurism themes, and an image of the artist as a child. I have no idea how to interpret this, but was very intrigued by the content.




Watch the Lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wniDyhQOepg