What size image and what size support you use are very important elements in composition. Size matters.
What size paper/canvas/board are you working towards? What size image? What about the space? It is so easy to pick up the same old sketch book and do the same thing time and again. Let’s make it more interesting. In this class you will be encouraged to be creative about size.
27th Sept. £45 /class 9.30am – 12.45pm
I think Tuesday is meant to be sodden. If you want to come to this class at Wherwell Priory Studio contact me for more details and availability kate@artdrawpaint.com
I went to Roche Court last week and saw the new exhibition by Darren Almond. Below is a brief extract about some of his work there. It is particularly relevant to this class. He has produced beautiful paintings of hypothetical views of space with colour, light and distance captured in a strangely recognisable way. I have no idea what he is painting, but I know it is space. Into this space are tiny specks of distant stars. Their size and the size of pictures make you feel very, very small.
Darren Almond: new work
17 Sep – 13 Nov 2016
Almond makes work which explores ideas about time, space, history and memory and how these abstract concepts intersect and impact on the individual. At the very core of his work is an exploration of time and space and for the viewer, they raise fundamental questions about our very existence.
In the gallery, Almond will show a series of ‘Timescape’ paintings, which explore his preoccupation with time and space to their absolute limits. They suggest the conundrum, that although we know a certain amount about deep space, there is still so much that remains – at least for now – unknowable. Conceptually, these depictions of the outer reaches of the cosmos engulf us in the beauty of the Milky Way; the colourful and dreamlike atmospheres which Almond has captured ultimately remind us of our insignificance within the enormity of the universe.
The Fauves wanted to pique the emotions by reducing forms to their essentials and the use of often saturated colour. They were reacting to the Impressionist painters who worked just before them, and were particularly inspired by Van Gogh and Gauguin. The term Fauves is applied to a fairly loose group including amongst others Derain, Matisse, Vlaminck, Dufy and early works from Kandinsky. Kandinsky went on to be a pioneer of the Abstract Expressionist – with a landmark exhibition just opened at the Royal Academy.
On Wednesday 28th September there is a course at the Riverside Yurt Cafe, Brandesbury, on the banks of the River Test. The BBC promise a sunny day and we will be looking at the beautiful setting asking “What would the Fauves do?”
Exploring an unparalleled period in American art, this long awaited exhibition reveals the full breadth of a movement that will forever be associated with the boundless creative energy of 1950s New York.
In the “age of anxiety” surrounding the Second World War and the years of free jazz and Beat poetry, artists like Pollock, Rothko and de Kooning broke from accepted conventions to unleash a new confidence in painting.Often monumental in scale, their works are at times intense, spontaneous and deeply expressive. At others they are more contemplative, presenting large fields of colour that border on the sublime. These radical creations redefined the nature of painting, and were intended not simply to be admired from a distance but as two-way encounters between artist and viewer.It was a watershed moment in the evolution of 20th-century art, yet, remarkably, there has been no major survey of the movement since 1959.
This autumn we bring together some of the most celebrated art of the past century, offering the chance to experience the powerful collective impact of Pollock, Rothko, Still, de Kooning, Newman, Kline, Smith, Guston and Gorky as their works dominate our galleries with their scale and vitality.
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We will also acknowledge the lesser-known figures who contributed to the development of the movement. Finally, we will include photography and sculpture to complete an ambitious re-evaluation of the phenomenon that saw New York take over from Paris as the capital of the art world.
The exhibition will be curated by the independent art historian Dr David Anfam, alongside Edith Devaney, Contemporary Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts. Dr Anfam is the preeminent authority on Abstract Expressionism, the author of the catalogue raisonné of Mark Rothko’s paintings and Senior Consulting Curator at the Clyfford Still Museum, Denver.
If you haven’t been to any of my classes before you might be a bit anxious about embarking on a course without knowing what you are letting yourself in for. Try this taster day, the first of the Still Life sessions of the term.
20th September, 9.30am – 12.45pm
Free ‘taster’ class open on a first come, first serve basis. Open to anyone whether you have been to a course with me before, or not. Please email me if you wish to come along; I need to know numbers.
This is the basis of all drawing and painting and is surprisingly easy to ignore, especially when you think you ‘know’ an object. There will be a number of exercises to help you really SEE what is in front of you.
This class will show you various ways to trick you into seeing what is in front of you.
