All Courses

 Course dates: September 16th - 19th 2019 (Monday - Thursday)

Exploratory drawings have direct energy and freshness. Finding ways of getting that equivalent quality into the paint can seem elusive. This course gives you four, full studio days of painting from drawings that you will bring with you. Your inspiration will be the sea so you will need to be able to do several visits to your nearest beach and coastline to do drawings. Simon will suggest different approaches to help you do a series of ten minute drawings.  You will then bring these exciting studies to the first day of the course (this is an essential part of the course, providing the subject and impetus for your paintings).

Course dates are September 20th, October 25th, November 22nd, December 20th

By registering  you are registering for all three sessions. These sessions are practical, to help students develop ongoing work. Nick will provide practical exercises, slide shows of artists work and one to one tutorials. There will be space to put up your work, to stand back and see where you are going with your painting. At the end of each session each student will have practical processes at their finger tips to apply to their work, and a focus to work towards for the next session.

Course dates: September 23rd - 25th 2019 (Monday - Wednesday)

The price includes model's fee.

Painting and drawing the head is more than just about getting a likeness. It is about form, and expression, the direction and quality of the mark. It is about the gaze, the character of the pose, the turn of the head, the angle of the neck, the light.

Dates: October 7th - 10th 2019 (Monday - Thursday)

Each of these Master Classes provide four days of energetic exploration into the nature of painting. John encourages and inspires artists to be courageous and confident with their work. Artists also benefit from the cooperation within a group of like-minded people - offering a diversity of approaches with no limits to the possibilities. These courses are only suitable for experienced painters who need help with ongoing work. Artists bring their own projects and themes and John helps them to develop the subject further. He provides fantastic inspiring lectures and brilliant individual tuition. You will go away from these workshops with lots of new work and a more in depth understanding of what the possibilities of paint have to offer. (Each Master Class can stand alone you do not have to book on all three).

Course Dates October 14th & 15th, November 11th & 12th, December 9th &10th 2019

By registering here you are booking for all the weeks in the term.

This monthly course provides help and support for experienced painters to become confident in establishing and sustaining a good regular working practise and a flow with their work. Both Emily and Julian focus on ways of inspiring a creative energy by giving talks, creating helpful exercises, giving demonstrations and one to one tutorials. Working as a group and individually each artist is helped to put more intensity and content into the work. Artists are given strategies to prevent hesitation, being stuck or bored. Artists need to bring their own subject, studies and on going work to each session. Being part of a group of like minded artists, and attending this course regularly over the year, will help each artist produce a strong and significant body of work, build confidence, independence and trust in their own creative abilities and intuition.

Course Dates October 16th - 18th ( Wednesday - Friday ) 2019

Choose which sessions in the year you would like to come. Booking ahead is essential to secure your place.

These sessions are designed for artists who need encouragement and support to become more confident and self-motivated with their painting. Artists bring their own subject and the tutor helps them to unpack, research and create their own personal practice, in order to help their work evolve and for them to see the creative possibilities more clearly. As part of the course the tutors also do talks showing the work of other artists. We explore using new materials and tools to play with to refresh and add to what you are doing. In conjunction with this we create practical, creative exercises to unpack the process of painting. Each student is given individual critiques and tuition as well as benefiting from working with a group of like minded artists. Three consecutive days gives the space and time to really see progress and to get absorbed in your work.

Dates: October 20th - 26th 2019 ( Sunday to Saturday)

This includes arrival and departure dates.

This course offers the opportunity of five days painting in the stunning location of the Algarve. Whilst staying in a beautiful villa, situated right on the boundary of a National Park, you will get inspiration for paintings in response to the surrounding secluded beaches with their views of the sea, landscape, rocky hillsides crammed and carpeted with wild herbs and flowers. The local landscape is studded with exotic trees and plants. Emily's guidance will focus on helping students to become more confident and fluent with their handling of paint in order to create paintings that capture the experience of the place and the intensity of sensations. Emily will provide warm up exercises to help students navigate how to make studies and then use these to inspire finished paintings.

All art materials, food and accommodation are included in the fee, but not flights. If students wish to have a single room there will be a supplement to pay of £175 for the week. This is an option in the checkout.

Course dates: October 22nd- 24th 2019 (Tuesday - Thursday)

The aim of this course is to enjoy the materials and allow the painting to evolve as you work. We will be experimenting with careful layering of paint and repetitive brush strokes, with varying rhythms, to create densely constructed forms which shift and change through the process. We will be looking at artists who use multiple processes pouring oil and inks on linen.

The work will be created using paints, pigments, inks, oil paint and dyes onto saturate surfaces, as well as using bending, wrinkling and folding. Out of this repetitive, engaging and meditative approach, the work just makes itself. This is very much an Eastern philosophy connecting the inner self to the outside world. We will be looking at wabi sabi which is a concept of Japanese aesthetics; the celebration of the beauty of the handmade process and nature, the imperfections, incompleteness and ever changing qualities. We will look at Korean artists of the Dansaekhuwa movement and also western contemporary artists who have this approach at the centre of their practise. There will be demonstrations throughout the course , students will be led by the tutor and encouraged to let the work lead them .

Course dates are September 20th, October 25th, November 22nd, December 20th

By registering  you are registering for all three sessions. These sessions are practical, to help students develop ongoing work. Nick will provide practical exercises, slide shows of artists work and one to one tutorials. There will be space to put up your work, to stand back and see where you are going with your painting. At the end of each session each student will have practical processes at their finger tips to apply to their work, and a focus to work towards for the next session.

4th - 8th November 2019 (Monday - Friday)

The price includes entrance to Sheffield Park.

Sheffield Park near Uckfield will be our inspiration for paintings. Famous for its beautiful Autumn colour; with its Acers, Nyssa, Taxodiums and Ginko trees. The reflections in the large lake double the impact and make the experience all the more magical. The course will start with 2 days working on location in the gardens making rich and exciting studies of the colour, textures and spaces; capturing all that is wonderful about working on location. The final 3 days will be back at the studio in Partridge Green making paintings from these studies.