Surrealism Inspired Painting

In looking at the wonderful world of surrealist painting my grade 11 Painting class began to investigate at the works of René Magritte and in particular ‘Les Valeurs Personnelles’ (Personal Values), 1952. Technically this piece is beautifully painted, but what was of particular interest was Magritte’s sophisticated use of scale and composition. With this in mind we headed to the computer room where students were given a list of 10 random objects to Google. Each Image was saved then the students were asked to use Photoshop to crop and position a number of them into a desirable composition. Emphasis was not only placed on the positioning of the image on the page, but the students were also encouraged to adjust the scale to suit the overall composition. By the end of the lesson the final composition was printed to become the basis for a painting on canvas. The random and somewhat disjointed nature of the photos and compositions certainly resulted in some interesting surrealist inspired imagery. It is also fair to say that the careful and realistic painting style provided its own challenges, allowing the students to acquire their own appreciation for Magritte’s talents as an artist.