The Mishkin Gallery is now home to the works of the artist and founder of the New York School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture: Mercedes Matter. I learnt of the Visual Text Workshop the gallery would be holding shortly after our second essays were returned and I was still unsure of which paper I was going to re-write. I imagined that the workshop would be a great lesson in enhancing my visual literacy, a skill that is  beneficial regardless of what paper I chose; therefore, I did not hesitate to register.

One of the activities we were asked to do during the hour long session, was to go about the gallery and choose a particular painting that we would like to discuss. I was intrigued by one piece by Matter entitled "Untitled (Eyes in the Sand)" Although i could not find an image of the painting online, I will share with you what i presented to the group, and hopefully that will give a decent mental visualization of the painting.

The painting was oil on canvas. The first aspect that drew me to this particular painting was Mercedes Matter left the muddy brown oil with an irregular consistency, leaving the surface rough and lumpy in certain places. This made the presence of "sand" easily perceptible. The rest of the painting was very fractured, with all the pieces of a face present, yet not intact, like a discombobulated Mr. Potato Head. There were many vertically constructed bold lines of red, black, and blue which brought the viewers sight upwards, yet their swirling contortions kept the focus spiraling around the center. Along with the negative space employed in the empty edges of the painting, this direction ingrained the viewer in the same quagmire as the objects stuck within the center of the painting. The motion caused in me a sense of confusion and hopelessness.

I found the visual text workshop very worthwhile, and believe everything i learned and discovered during its course I will be able to put to good use in the future.