Purchase & The Painting of Bad Decisions

Purchase

Today Daya had her final college audition- not that there have been many- up at SUNY Purchase.

Purchase has an excellent dance program, it's close to the city, and I can afford it (I qualify for some NY program I forgot the name of for full tuition reimbursement).

Anyhow this is Daya's "safe" school.

She only applied to three places:

USC

Juilliard

Purchase

Daya doesn't want to go anywhere, and she doesn't like anything.

Her options are already really limited for what she wants to do.

So we'll see.

I have concern about it and at the same time no concern at all, which is a really weird state to be in.

So anyhow we went to Purchase and the trip up there was not a big deal.

Metro-North goes up to White Plains, then it's a 15 minute cab or bus ride from there.

I like Grand Central, always have.

We had some trouble finding the dance building.

It was not here.

We walked around, and it was a good thing we were early.

It's not a fancy campus but that's ok.

I am told it's a lot nicer in the Spring.

Because it's kind of in the middle of nowhere, it's pretty quiet.

I don't know if they are on a break or something up there (???) but the campus was DEAD.

Even Pratt is more lively on the weekends, except during a break.

Purchase was DEAD.

We got to the dance building at 8:30 and registered early.

We were supposed to be there at 9, but it is better to be early because you do your solo/interview early and then you can leave early.

This was their last day of auditions and it was pretty packed.

(They accept about 45 people.)

The department head person came to talk to parents at 10 for a half hour, the audition started at 10:30 and went til 1. Then they did cuts.

It's a no-brainer that Daya didn't get cut.

Then they move on to solos and interviews.

Daya was 4th and done by 2:30.

She doesn't like Purchase.

She says their standards are mediocre.****

Everyone from LaGuardia gets in, and that's another reason she really doesn't want to go.

She has friends at LaG, but there are also people she doesn't like and I guess she would be with them at Purchase if she went, and she's not thrilled about that.

I get it.

It's understandable.

The dance world is very small and there will likely be LaGuardia people everywhere she goes but I can see why it would be more of an issue at Purchase, if she's there with several people she knows and doesn't care for.

(I don't know why she doesn't like these people, she said nothing happened but won't tell me any more.)

**** I do not know if their standards are really mediocre, it really is a great program. I do trust Daya's discernment in all things dance, however she's such a precise exact demanding person when it comes to technique.

In dance Daya's standards are over-the-top excellence, and she doesn't have tolerance for anything less. But that's also what makes her a great artist. It's because of that level of exactness, rigor, and fervor that I think Juilliard is truly her place. And maybe in a place like that she'll also learn the more abstract balance of loosening up a little. The right level of loose combined with incredible technique equals brilliance.

There are a lot of painting parallels here but I won't go into it.

FWIW she said some of the people at the Juilliard callback were people she knows from social media, and I guess they are pretty big online.  And she was surprised to see that even though they did a lot of fancy moves on video, their ballet technique really wasn't that good.

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If Purchase turns out to be her only viable choice we'll have to really talk about next steps.

She needs to go.... somewhere.... after high school, but I'm also not going to force her to go somewhere she really doesn't want to be, as much as it might seem to be a good thing.

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The Painting of Bad Decisions

While Daya was in dance I ventured out to paint.

I didn't want to go too far from the dance building because I didn't know my time limit (and also because I didn't want to get lost).

Bad Decision 1: The View

I thought it would be a Great! idea! to do some perspective and architecture for a change.

And I had all those nice Hopper paintings in my head.

Bad Decision 2: The Palette

I decided to run the Zorn palette plus turquoise.

This palette has never once let me down and it is also a time-saver.

I do think this painting would have worked with Zorn + Turquoise but I did not get it working properly.

Honestly I just shouldn't have painted this stupid view.

It's a bummer of a painting, I toiled for 3 1/2 hours on it, but you can never escape a faulty composition plus a few (fixable but I won't afterwards) drawing issues.

I DID figure out the comp intentionally before I started but it just didn't work.

The lighting kept changing pretty dramatically.

There's nothing like a flop painting to make an artist feel crappy.

Well, I did learn some things, I did go for a challenge instead of something easy, and the reality is that it is a VERY difficult painting especially for an 8x10.

I just kept thinking of how David and Thor would probably just knock it out perfectly. :/