The Studio on Film
Painting Pattern
This 3 day practical course starts with the examination of African Kuba Cloth. From that very direct observational starting point, students go on to explore the fertile relationship between painting and textiles, and how pattern has become a fundamentally important part of modernist and post-modernist art. Using pattern, rhythm and repetition in conjunction with colour, paint and it’s manipulation becomes an exciting and vibrant component in painting – and an inexhaustibly stimulating subject.
Swimming Pool Paintings
The Swimming Pool paintings are Emily Ball’s largest body of work to date. Inspired by watching her young children learn to swim, Emily quickly became captivated by the interaction between the figures and the water surrounding them. Made over five years, these paintings have an ambition and confidence that reveals an artist following her instincts and creating her own painterly language that meaningfully captures the essential qualities of her subject. The resulting work has a gravitas and weight to it, so that whilst colours may zing and leap on the canvas, and subjects may be full of joy – the paintings themselves are anything but lightweight.
Summer School
Our Summer School offers a wonderful opportunity to be immersed in - and paint - the breath-taking views of the Cuckmere Valley (East Sussex). This location has it all: seascapes, dramatic cliffs, the winding river, the sound of skylarks overhead and the extraordinary base of the coastguard cottage. It truly is a slice of heaven! Working with other students and with the support of artists and tutors Emily Ball and Katie Sollohub, this 5-day course starts with 2 days working on location at Cuckmere Haven, followed by 3 days in the Seawhite Studio.
Floribunda
Floribunda is a hugely popular four-day painting course offered by Emily Ball at Seawhite. In essence, the course is a celebration of flowers and plants and the abundance of nature. This film charts the planning and preparation for the course together with the experience of painting and drawing in a studio transformed into an exotic hot house filled with sculptural forms, dramatic colour and heady scents.
The Road
This short film was made to give an insight into a series of drawings and paintings made by Emily Ball in response to her journey by car to the studio in Partridge Green. The dazzling light, road signs, changing glimpses of the landscape seen through the car windscreen were all inspiration. Emily reads a poem that she wrote, inspired by the paintings and the journey, that celebrates the experience of looking with fresh eyes at an everyday occurrence. Language, movement and poetic invention are at the heart of what matters to Emily in her work and this subject provided an exciting challenge to explore it in a new way.
The Figure
In February 2020 the Seawhite Studio ran an ambitious and exciting new course based around the moving figure tutored by Katie Sollohub and Lydia CS. This short film captures how the work develops and the space of the studio is used in an experimental way over the period of 3 days. This short film captures how the work develops and the space of the studio is used in an experimental way over the period of 3 days. The poem was written and read by our wonderful model, Tamsin Williams, as a performance on the final day of working. Students finished the course leaving with energy, inspiration, courage 'to dare' to play and armfuls of work to continue in their own studios.
Visit our YouTube Channel to see more film clips and show reels of our courses.