Third year spreads his passion for painting at STU
Dusty Green hunches over a canvas on his kitchen table. He is painting in a surprisingly sun soaked basement apartment. His canvas background is a pale wash of colour, the foreground marked with dark dripping spiral shapes. It is deliberately messy.
“I mostly paint memories.” he says. “The images you have breakdown over time, eventually all you have are slivers of sight, smell, sound. I am trying to paint these memories at their last point. When they are messy, watery.”
Green is a third year student at St. Thomas University studying visual arts. On campus he can sometimes be seen painting during his breaks, or over coffee. The spiral shapes are a recurring theme in Green’s work. He admits having somewhat of a mild obsession with them.
“They occur naturally in jellyfish, snails, whirlpools, even in your fingertips. They’re both beautiful and repulsive.”
His paintings are almost exclusively done in watercolour though he has been experimenting with acrylics. His painting style is characterized by methods of control and chaos. He has a vision – he makes deliberate brushstrokes, but often lets dripping paint go where it goes without interfering.
In the late spring Green was involved in a shared exhibition in the used book room in James Dunn Hall. The exhibition was composed of Green, his brother Joshua Green – who played music, and their friend Greg Everett, a writer, who had his work printed and displayed on the wall.
“It was the first time I saw people interested in my work,” he says, beaming.
Green recounts financial advice he received from sculptor and St. Thomas University Fine Arts professor Robin Peck at the show.
“He talked to me about pricing. He told me to take the cost of the materials, plus every hour you put in – he said an artist’s time is worth twenty dollars an hour – add it together and times that by ten. I laughed. I thought he was joking.”
Green has also been participating in Downtown Fredericton’s weekly artist market. He says that the positive reception from fellow artists and market-goers has been encouraging.
“It’s nice to talk about your art. Sometimes you can go a bit stir-crazy in your own head.” The market’s practicing-artist atmosphere has also been beneficial for Green, who, like the other artists, uses the time to work on projects, “I just bring my stuff down there and paint,” he says.
Green is currently the President of the Fine Arts Student Association of St. Thomas University. They welcome visual artists, musicians, creative writers and arts enthusiasts. He says this upcoming year they are primarily interested in increasing membership and exhibiting student work.
“We are in cahoots with Gallery Connexion this year. If students are interested in exhibiting their work this year they can contact us.”
Green says that in the upcoming year he would like to focus on developing his work and participating in more exhibitions but adds, “I am open to any direction my art might take me.”
FASAST will be hosting their first exhibition this year on Sept. 25 in the main gallery of Gallery Connexion. For more information please e-mail Green at [email protected].
