Short Courses

 Course dates: 21 - 24 April  2020 (Tuesday - Friday)

Spring is a magic time of year that moves all too fast as nature wakes up and blooms. Embrace the energy of spring with four days exploring ways of courageously handling luscious paint to create paintings that go beyond safe, traditional flower paintings. The subject is full of colour, texture and sculptural form......a gift for painting. The course will be packed with demonstrations, exercises and finished paintings to take away with you.

 Course dates: 28 April - 1 May 2020 (Tuesday - Friday)

Spring is a magic time of year that moves all too fast as nature wakes up and blooms. Embrace the energy of spring with four days exploring ways of courageously handling luscious paint to create paintings that go beyond safe, traditional flower paintings. The subject is full of colour, texture and sculptural form......a gift for painting. The course will be packed with demonstrations, exercises and finished paintings to take away with you.

Course dates: May 5-6, 2020 (Tuesday and Wednesday)

Colour is a deep and mysterious language and used correctly it can open your work up to a kaleidoscope of possibilities. During this course we will be looking at how we can use colour with a little bit of theory but mainly taking a hands on approach working applying colour and making our own discoveries.Over the 2 days we will be looking at ways in which colour can open up your own work with key lessons about pigment, light, pitch, under painting, layering, transparency, opacity and luminosity.

Course dates: 26 - 28 May 2020  (Tuesday - Thursday)

We are fascinated by animals and by the animal in us. And this relationship is a constant and powerful theme in art whether that be Babara Kingsolver’s exploration of her own fecundity in the Prodigal Summer, Kiki Smiths’ tactile sculptures, tapestrys, drawings and prints, Paula Rego’s ‘ dog women’ and anthropomorphised rabbits, dogs and monkeys, Picasso’s minotaurs or films such as The Levelling by Hope Dickson Leach or Bullhead by Michael R Roskam that powerfully and shockingly examine our contemporary  agricultural relationships with the animal.

On this 3 day course practical course we will work in an expressive,  gestural and tactile manner through drawing and painting on paper at a large scale from photographs and models to make images that combine the observational  with our felt experience.

31 May - 2 June 2020 (Sunday - Tuesday)

The price includes materials.

Locations - Rackham Village Hall and the South Downs near Amberley - Days 1 & 2, Seawhite Studio, Partridge Green - Day 3 (Moderate level of fitness required).

These 3 days give students the opportunity to work with two artists who have devoted many years to celebrating the benefits and discipline of working 'en plein air' in the landscape. We are part of Nature, and it is always changing around us. Moving through it, touching it and allowing the weather, light and seasons to affect us has a profound effect on our work and inspiration.  With two days walking on the South Downs, gathering and collecting observations and sensations in visual and written form, this course will be a rich and rewarding investment into your own practice.  It will encourage you to take a playful and experimental approach to writing and drawing, allowing the poetic possibilities to thrive and for your response to move way beyond merely copying the view.   

Course dates: 3 - 5 June 2020 (wednesday to Friday)

Course dates: 16-18 June 2020 (Tuesday - Thursday)

Price includes large sheets of paper and some materials.

This course is aimed at delving into the experience of mark making - the fun of it and the work of it. It offers you the chance to fine tune and enrich your mark-making language for deeper personal expression.  With opportunities to extend your senses as an artist through music and body movement as well as experience the freedom of MAMMOTH mark-making, you will develop a new awareness of how marks can be both a response to a feeling and an evoker of feeling.

Working mainly on paper, you will make at least two large pieces of mark making – working with music as the inspiration.  You will also create a set of small drawings generated from phone videos made by students.  Together with music, these drawings will inspire at least one other large piece.  Students will leave the course with a restocked creative tool kit that they can use to inform and inspire further work.  Course discussions will consider the mark making of artists such as Joan Mitchell, Mark Rothko, Simon Carter and Cy Twombly.

Course dates: 15-17 September 2020 (Tuesday - Thursday)

Course dates: 26 - 28 October 2020  (Monday - Wednesday)

Differentiating tree species, finding order in complexity, spotting the tiger in the long grass or simply gaining optical delight from rhythmical repetition – recognising pattern and getting pleasure from that recognition is something we have, for good reason, evolved to do.

These two 3 day courses are suitable for both first time Painting and Pattern students and those that wish to deepen their engagement with this fascinating area of inquiry.

Students will be supported by a mixture of slide lectures, one to one tutorial support, practical demonstration  and group discussion.

The course description is only indicative as this is a developing area of inquiry and therefore subject to continuous change and revision. Which is of course what makes it exciting.

9th-13th November 2020 (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.