GOUACHE: THE POWER OF THE COMMONPLACE
REGISTER
$710

WITH CATHERINE DRABKIN


May 17-20, 2024

Friday - Monday


IN PERSON AT BLACK POND. Gouache is a wonderfully versatile medium. In this intensive long weekend, you will learn how to make it work for you. We will dive into painting an expansive and evolving still life/interior space. Exploring the mystery of the everyday, we will turn ordinary forms into the extraordinary. Each day, your work will be supported by individual conversations and group critiques. Our goal will be to discover the challenges and thrills of using light, shadow, and color to make meaning and build a sustainable, nimble studio process. Studio sessions will include a slide talk and discussion that explores rhythm, movement, the creative process, and a variety of art historical masterworks. WORKSHOP FEE INCLUDES LUNCHES.

ONE OBJECT IN 100 WAYS
REGISTER
$650

WITH ELIZABETH O'REILLY


JUNE 20-23, 2024

Thursday-Sunday


NOW ONLINE. Using one object of your choice, you’ll receive 100 prompts for ways to paint it in watercolor or the water-based medium of your choice. Some prompts will be slow and thoughtful, some will be fast and furious, and some will stretch your color choices. Your object could be a pineapple, an artichoke, or a witch hat — anything that will engage you over several days. Other possibilities: painting your object in a good or bad mood, with a blindfold on, or on a large scale. To expand your options, acrylics, pastels, and collage may be used in addition to watercolor. The goals of the workshop will be to break out of old habits, increase your proficiency, and have fun doing it!

CINEMA AND THE ART OF PAINTING
REGISTER
$750

WITH VERA ILIATOVA


TUESDAYS

July 9

July 16

July 23

July 30

August 6

2024

1-4:30 p.m. eastern time


ONLINE WORKSHOP. Taking inspiration from the history of cinema and painting, students will examine the parallels between these two media. How can color, value, composition, and texture be used to create a narrative progression and a passage of time? What is narrative and can it be expressed abstractly as well as literally? Each week we will look deeply into these concepts across a selection of contemporary and historical paintings and films. Thematically, we will focus on still life, landscape, and interior as the starting points for creating a narrative. Students will be given a prompt to experiment with in their own paintings and drawings. Students will develop technical and conceptual skills that are crucial to the painting process. The course will include image presentations, film clips, and recommendations for further film viewing and reading. Meetings will be held on Zoom and work will be shared on the Padlet platform. 

PAINTING: PERSONAL AND POWERFUL
REGISTER
$950

WITH NANCY McCARTHY


Sept 10-Dec 17, 2024

 

Eight meetings

Tuesdays 6:00 -9:30 p.m.

eastern time

September 10 and 24

October 8 and 22

November 5 and 19

December 3 and 17

2024

 

There are 3 main objectives in this ONLINE class:

• To identify aspects of your work that are distinct and personal, and to explore ways of developing and fortifying those aspects.

• To determine areas of your work that are weak and/or diminish your work and (using a variety of exercises), work to improve those areas.  

• To establish a consistent, disciplined painting practice.

 

The goal of creating more personal and powerful paintings will be addressed by considering the following issues: content, composition/format, color, surface as well as materials and craft. We will explore the aspects of painting that interest each student most, including experimentation with materials and conceptual and technical approaches to painting or more traditional work from observation. Classes consist of discussion, image presentations and critique. Each student will develop a set of written goals as well as a painting schedule. Students must be present and are encouraged to participate in all discussion and critiques. Students will post new work, preliminary drawings, and work in progress on the Padlet each week for discussion. Additionally, students are required to research and identify their relatives, 3 artists whose work shares common elements with their own work or the work they aspire to do.

Those who want more structure and/or direction will be given assignments tailored to their particular needs. Group discussion of student work along with looking at contemporary and historical painting will enhance the class.

Meetings will be held on Zoom and work will be shared on Padlet, the online platform.

DRAWING UPON LITERATURE
REGISTER
$975

WITH SUSAN LICHTMAN

AND ROBIN FEUER MILLER


Seven meetings

Tuesdays

10:30 a.m-2 p.m. eastern time

September 17

September 24

October 1

October 8

October 15

October 22

October 29

2024


ONLINE WORKSHOP. This interdisciplinary, team-taught workshop will bring together the practice of studio art and the study of Russian literature. Working in a range of media (drawing, painting, and digital), participants will use Russian fiction (and some critical theory) as source material for the creation of visual images. Readings will include short texts of Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Babel, and Nabokov.


Meetings will be held on Zoom and work will be shared on the Padlet platform.


Lectures by Robin Feuer Miller will introduce the readings, and visual exercises will be presented by Susan Lichtman. Both instructors will review the work with the group in live, interactive meetings. Participants should have basic drawing and painting experience.


Robin Feuer Miller, Edytha Macy Gross Professor of Humanities and Professor of Russian and Comparative Literature at Brandeis University.

Susan Lichtman, Painter, Professor of Fine Arts, Brandeis University

Image: Anna Karenina by Susan Lichtman


THE COMMON OBJECT

WITH ERIN RAEDEKE



TUESDAYS

March 12

March 19

March 26

April 2

April 9

2024

1 p.m.-4:30 p.m. eastern time US and Canada


In this ONLINE painting workshop, we will work from a common object, but the way each of us interprets this object will be anything but common. Each participant will include a balloon as part of a still life. Inflated or deflated, in the air or laying on a table, a remnant from a party that tells a narrative or a stand-in for a sphere in a formal investigation — these are just a few ways this ordinary object can be used and interpreted. Along with working from a common object, we will also share the same palette of colors, further exploring how sharing something in common can lead to individual expression and interpretation. Meetings will be held on Zoom and work will be shared on Padlet. Oil paint is the recommended medium.

COLOR RULES

WITH NANCY McCARTHY


THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL


May 30-June 2, 2024

Thursday-Sunday

10 a.m. - 4 p.m.


IN PERSON AT BLACK POND! Color Rules! It does, absolutely, but there are NO rules, formulas, or 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 acrylic gouache on paper helps us understand how color functions and increases our personal color vocabulary. This workshop is meant for anyone working with color: painters, designers, architects, etc. WORKSHOP FEE INCLUDES LUNCHES.

THE DAILY MIRACLE

WITH JENNIFER POCHINSKI


THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL


One of the pleasant things those of us who write or paint do is to have the daily miracle. It does come. ~ Gertrude Stein


June 6-10, 2024

Thursday-Monday

10 a.m.-4 p.m.


IN PERSON AT BLACK POND

The workshop will center around painting from life. We will start with objects/still life and move to the figure and self portraits, with many short exercises throughout the five days. Basic materials needed: oil paint or acrylic. No specific palette required. Supports include mostly paper and some canvas or panels. Recommended for experienced painters. Workshop fee includes lunches and model.

LA MATERIA II

WITH LUCY MacGILLIS


THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL



June 27-29, 2024

10 a.m.-5 p.m. eastern time


IN PERSON AT BLACK POND!

In this intensive three-day workshop, we will work from a still life setup, with handmade Italian earth paints. Lucy will share her joy of 'la materia' — the material of paint itself, and the grinding process of oil paint. The limited earth palette and use of palette knives will help participants improve their mixing of tones, and consider more carefully the relationships of colors. We will make several quick studies and one longer one; daily critiques will include art historical references. We will focus specifically on Cezanne's still life paintings in this class, sketching from his work as well as creating our own paintings. Some pigment will be supplied and lunch will be provided each day. Workshop fee includes lunches.

VARIATIONS ON A THEME

Exploring the world through drawing, sculpture, printmaking and collage


WITH NANCY GRUSKIN AND MAUREEN NATHAN


THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL



Five meetings

WEDNESDAYS

September 11 through October 9, 2024

11 a.m.-2 p.m. eastern time



ONLINE: Much can be learned from working across media and exploring one theme through 2D and 3D processes. Prior to the start of this online workshop, participants will select a subject to serve as the springboard for their drawings, sculptures, prints, and collages. This subject could be a group of objects, a personal photograph, the view from the artist’s window, a work of art produced by another artist, or an intangible idea. Maureen Nathan will encourage participants to develop and explore their chosen subjects through a variety of drawing exercises that aim to expand the artists’ alphabet of marks with an emphasis on context. Nancy Gruskin will then shift the focus from 2D to 3D, inviting students to interpret their drawings as sculptures constructed of common household materials. In week three, these sculptures will serve as subject matter for prints. Nathan will introduce both intaglio and relief printmaking using recycled materials with water-based inks. In our fourth meeting, participants will explore paper cut-outs and the medium of collage with Gruskin, using their prints from week three as points of departure. Our fifth class will give participants the opportunity to talk about their work, as we consider final thoughts on the conversation between drawing, sculpture, printmaking, and collage.

Nathan and Gruskin will be participants in this workshop, as well as instructors, with the aim of facilitating exciting and unexpected outcomes. We will use Zoom to meet as a group and all work will be shared on Padlet. Slide presentations and demos will supplement both instructors’ exercises. A small craft press is useful, but not necessary, for the printmaking exercises.

ABSTRACTION FOR REPRESENTATIONAL PAINTERS, THROUGH COLLAGE

WITH KEN KEWLEY


THIS WORKSHOP IS FULL


September 19 – 23, 2024

Thursday – Monday


IN PERSON AT BLACK POND. This is a workshop for getting back to what we already knew. Back to those wooden blocks that we could pile up into worlds that thrilled and surprised us. Many of us were taught that representation came before abstraction. That we start with something, then we abstract it. This is backwards. Abstraction must come first. Otherwise, there is nothing to build representation with. No wooden blocks. We may ask ourselves, what is wrong with our work? What did we not get? 


One day (spread over several years) I realized what I had left out. It was the abstraction. I had left the art out. No matter how well the subject is observed, it is the shapes within things, the arrangement of the light and dark shapes, that must make up the representation.



Collage is the quickest way to make shapes. I think of collage as painting with dry paint. In the workshop we start by arranging shapes without subject. Then we will work from our own work, and each other’s, finding ways to shift the shapes to strengthen our representations. Lunch is included in the workshop fee.

THE HEAD EXAMINED: THEN AND NOW
REGISTER
$950

WITH CATHERINE KEHOE


EIGHT MEETINGS

Wednesdays

January 15

January 22

January 29

February 5

February 12

February 19

February 26

March 5

2025

11 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Eastern time


ONLINE WORKSHOP. For the first half of the workshop, portraits from art history will be the point of departure for study of pictorial structure, with a focus on the head. We will touch upon the universal proportions of the head; a simple, intuitive drawing method will be introduced to help with drawing accuracy. Mediums will include graphite, charcoal, collage, gouache, acrylic and/or oil paint or materials you have on hand. Each participant will choose and examine one or two images from art history and generate permutations through exercises that lead to simplification and abstraction. This rigorous and wide-ranging analysis of images from our painting ancestors will feed our own work and imaginations as we engage with images that speak to us still. In the second half of the workshop, you will take the experience from multiple exercises and turn your attention to the head in the mirror. The head we see every day is a meaningful, personal, and convenient subject for a painting. This segment takes a reductive approach to painting the head, seeking how little information is enough. Using paint, we will investigate whether translating the head into a few accurate shapes of color and value can create a truer likeness than a detailed description can. We will meet on Zoom and share work on the Padlet platform.

IMPROVISATION INTO ABSTRACTION
REGISTER
$855

WITH DAVID HORNUNG


June 12-16, 2025

Five days

Thursday - Monday

10 a.m. - 4 p.m.


IN PERSON AT BLACK POND. In this relaxed and supportive five-day workshop, we make small scale acrylic paintings that explore an improvisational approach to abstraction. The emphasis is on experimentation and workflow with special focus on the interplay between intention and chance in the creative process. We use various tools and both additive and subtractive processes to generate surprising visual events that can be developed into compelling abstract compositions. Studio work is complemented by slide shows and discussions that examine both historical and contemporary abstract painting. Painters at all levels of experience are welcome to participate. Workshop fee include lunches and some provided supplies. The instructor will provide 20 11x14 inch gessoed chipboard panels and a paint shield for each participant. Please bring the other supplies on the materials list below.



WORKSHOPS ARE HELD ONLINE OR IN PERSON.

PLEASE READ EACH WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION FOR DETAILS.

 

Hours for online workshops: Determined by individual instructors.


In-person workshops begin at 10 a.m. eastern time.


RECORDING POLICY:

Online classes at Black Pond are meant to be live and interactive.

The voices of all participants are vital to the experience. We seek to protect the intellectual property of our instructors. For these reasons, we generally do not record online meetings. If you are registered for a workshop and need to miss a meeting, please contact us (not your instructor) via email at blackpondstudio@gmail.com, 24 hours in advance to request a recording of that meeting. Recordings are available for 48 hours.

We do not record entire workshops. 


To register for a workshop, click the "REGISTER" link below the title. 

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Contact us at blackpondstudio@gmail.com with questions, or to be added to a waiting list.