WITH LUCY MacGILLIS

THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL

February 12-17, 2021
Friday-Wednesday

This ONLINE workshop, with Italy-based painter Lucy MacGillis, will look closely at five 500-year-old Italian secular masterpieces, investigating what makes them so powerful. Each day will begin with an introduction to the painter whose work we are studying, and the context in which the painting was created. We will draw from these paintings, searching for the brilliant uses of rhythm, duality and repetition within the geometry of the painting. Specific paintings from the Renaissance will be our sources. In the afternoons, participants will create a painted sketch to better grasp the use of color in that day's painting. We will conclude with a group critique of the studies and a discussion about the colors that were used to create the original paintings.
Each participant will receive a kit in the mail, prior to the course, containing prints of the five paintings we will transcribe, as well as Fabriano paper measured in proportion to the works. There will also be primed paper provided for afternoon painting studies. (The workshop fee includes the cost of materials and shipping.) The three daily meetings will be on Zoom, and work will be shared in online albums.
Limited to 15 participants. This five day workshop runs over six days, with a day off midweek.

WITH NANCY GRUSKIN

THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL

March 6-8, 2021
Saturday-Monday

“A good actor can have a part in ten different plays; an object can play a role in ten different pictures.” Henri Matisse

In this three-day ONLINE workshop, we will make drawings, collages, and paintings of still life objects. These objects will serve as a springboard for experimentation and individual expression. Exercises will focus on playing with form, color and composition, as we see how far we can push our work’s relationship to reality. As we become more acquainted with these objects during the course of the workshop, we will take more liberties with their depiction, incorporating invented imagery and outside source material. Artists will be working in collage and with drawing materials, and water-based and/or oil paint. Slide shows of the work of modern and contemporary artists will supplement the exercises. It is intended to invigorate the practice of newer and more experienced artists alike. The workshop will meet on Zoom, two or three times per day, and work will be shared in an online album for discussion.

WITH NANCY McCARTHY

March 11-13, 2021
Thursday-Saturday

ONLINE WORKSHOP The striking contrasts of black and white, and the subtle differences between grays, will be the fuel for our images. First, using brushes with black ink on white paper, we will build compositions from shapes of black and white, with still life and the landscape as our sources. We will move into ink washes, then switch to white on black, and each day delve into more exercises using pens, cut paper, collage and block prints. Our aim is to generate a volume of drawings, from both observation and abstraction, which expand our visual vocabulary, sensitivity to value and shape, as well as compositional skills. We will use Zoom to meet as as group, view image presentations, share and discuss work.

WITH GWEN STRAHLE

MARCH 27-30, 2021
Saturday-Tuesday

ONLINE WORKSHOP
Drawing can be painterly, whether using charcoal, pencil or ink. This workshop will stimulate and maintain a continuous flow of drawing energy and examination. We will work from observation, using various materials and approaches. Exercises will be woven into the structure, including drawing from memory, gestures, drawing from other members of the studio. We will build abstractly to serve observation — drawing, re-drawing, re-thinking, re-seeing, re-working, to pull the drawing out from the inside, through process. Let’s make changes in order to dig deeper into the drawing experience, and provide opportunity for new invention. And, of course, it’s a marathon, so non-stop drawing...
Price includes model fee.

WITH JENNIFER POCHINSKI

THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL

Five meetings
WEDNESDAYS
March 31
April 7
April 14
April 21
April 28
2021
1:30-5 p.m. eastern US time
(calculate for your own time zone)

When you give up on the idea of right and wrong, you get rid of everything — freedom from ideas and responsibilities.
— Agnes Martin

ONLINE WORKSHOP. Participants will meet on Wednesdays over the course of five weeks. There will be slide presentations as well as demos that illustrate the focus for the week. Each week exercises will be introduced.
Participants will post their work on Padlet and will have group feedback sessions during the meetings. Exploration and discovery are the main objectives for the course. The exercises will be based both from life and from photo sources.

WITH LUCY MacGILLIS
April 9-11, 2021
Friday-Sunday

In this intense three-day ONLINE workshop, we will grind our own paints from raw Italian pigments and walnut oil, for a full earth palette. We will use this palette to create a still life painting of lemons. There will be a strong emphasis on mixing oil paint and the use of the palette knife. Parallel to the exploration of this common yellow form we will explore how we perceive yellow visually, and how artists have historically represented the lemon beginning with early roman frescoes from Pompeii. How does the plasticity of the lemon’s yellow oval affect the composition? The role of the lemon in Italy’s history will accompany our visual exploration.
We will meet on Zoom two or three times per day, and share the work in online albums.
Participants will receive a selection of earth pigments, walnut oil and other materials from Zecchi in Florence. The cost of supplied materials is included in the workshop fee.

WITH NANCY McCARTHY

THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL

April 17-19, 2021
Saturday-Monday

10:30 a.m.-5 p.m. US eastern time
Check your own time zone

ONLINE WORKSHOP. Color Rules! It does, absolutely, but there are NO rules, no formulas, no tricks. There is intention, getting color to say what you want it to say. In this intensive workshop we consider basic color concepts such as value, hue, and saturation and learn how to manipulate them to energize our work. Building color relationships with gouache on paper helps up understand how color functions and to build our personal color vocabulary. This workshop is meant for anyone working with color: painters, designers, architects, etc. We will use Zoom to meet as as group, view image presentations, share and discuss work.

WITH ROTEM AMIZUR

THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL

May 1-4, 2021
Saturday-Tuesday

ONLINE WORKSHOP We will begin by painting papers with colors that excite us. Then, looking at old masters’ paintings, we will choose hues that create a sensation equivalent to what is evoked by them. Working only with our pre-painted papers helps us find unexpected color combinations. We look for relationships that feel good as opposed to "mixing the colors out there." Once colors are chosen and satisfying to us, we can dive into the continuous cycle of building, overlapping, changing and moving the cutout shapes — thus experiencing painting, drawing, observation, and invention as inseparable.

We will work small, with foam board and pins, pinning the cut-out shapes as we go along. Pinning as opposed to immediately gluing gives us a chance to constantly move shapes around. Making a variation, then another and another... Each new combination of colors leads us to see the reproduction in a new way — memory and familiarity making the game even more exciting and giving us the courage to make decisions we wouldn’t have dreamed of in the beginning. We are using the masters as our source but creating something distinctly personal and our own.
We will use Zoom to meet as as group, view image presentations, share and discuss work.

WITH PETER VAN DYCK

THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL

ONLINE WORKSHOP
May 12-16, 2021
Wednesday-Sunday

Using pencil sketches, color studies, larger drawings and painting on location, we will build paintings of interior spaces from direct observation. Our goal will be to merge two different ways of organizing and depicting space in a painting: one will be through drawing the 3-dimensional, volumetric quality of the space; the other will be through finding large color relationships to express the movement of light through space. Experience in basic observational drawing as well as with oil and/or acrylic paint will be helpful.

WITH ELIZABETH O'REILLY

ONLINE WORKSHOP
June 5-9, 2021
Saturday-Wednesday

Expand your watercolor fluency by experimenting with value, color, mark making and scale. Through a variety of exercises and techniques including staining, texture, dry brush, wet on wet and accidents, you will become more aware of how to manipulate the medium while maintaining its fluidity. Multiple studies will be created using references from nature. Other exercises may include working large (to put our body motion into the strokes), working abstractly, and creating collages from students’ own drawings and paintings. Looking at images of contemporary watercolor will be included. Participants should have some previous experience with watercolor.
This workshop will be held on Zoom, with three one-hour meetings per day.

WITH TIM KENNEDY AND EVE MANSDORF
August 2-6, 2021
Monday-Friday

ONLINE WORKSHOP. Familiar and overlooked subjects will be the basis for unexpected and inspired paintings. Think of Bonnard’s windows or Fairfield Porter’s views of his neighborhood on Long Island. A landscape does not have to be a mountain in the distance, but might be a space as intimate as your back yard. Often the evidence of human presence can help to organize a motif, and objects can mitigate the boundless quality of landscape with specificity, narrative and humor. Such motifs present the possibility of contrasting the organic color and forms found in nature with synthetic color, shape and manufactured surfaces.

Participants will pick a site where people and nature coexist, whether it be a back yard, a park, a swimming pool, or the outskirts of a suburban neighborhood. Plan to produce a series of small, one-day paintings that explore both the natural beauty of a place and the human use of that space as it may be presented through objects, activities or built structures. We will use Zoom to meet two to three times a day to share our work.

WITH LUCY MacGILLIS

2021 DATES TO BE ANNOUNCED

In this intense three-day course, Lucy MacGillis shares her love for paint, beginning with its creation — mixing raw earth pigments from Italy with linseed oil. Working directly from observation of the model, participants learn not only how to create their own paint, but are guided in looking closely at the tones of the figure before them. By limiting the range of colors, painters use the relationships between colors to give them more force.
Using herculaneum and pozzuoli red, warm italian earth, yellow ochre, naples yellow, earth green, herculaneum blue, burnt and raw umber, roman black earth, and titanium white, participants are encouraged to paint with the palette knife via trial and error, mixing, placing the paint and scraping it off as needed — the result being a harmonious study of space, color and form.
Working directly from the observation of the nude model, participants are encouraged to simplify the figure into simple, carefully mixed planes of color.
On the each day there will be several fast studies as well as longer poses. Each day ends in a group critique including art historical examples, referring back to the Italian tradition of figure painting.