This course is designed to develop your capacity to make free uninhibited gestures and progressively apply the energy to drawings and paintings. It is not about realism is is about atmosphere and mood. We will explore colour and mark making as we draw form from life or collage. Each week time will be spent in sharing and a brief grounding meditation before we start work. The aim is for you to leave with art works that you can and will want to put on your wall as well as the confidence to take your creative adventure into your home life.

8th April

Engaging with emotions and intuition, we begin with texture, images and colour a free exploration allowing our emotions and the ‘stuff’ of our lives, emerge to show itself. From this collage we may find themes and colours we want to explore and develop.

15th April

Today we play, with large pieces of paper and big brushes, to move and make set the paint free. Using poster paint and water we will see just how much energy and movement we can contain in one gesture or on one sheet of paper. By taking inspiration from Zen calligraphy, Japanese Sumi and various abstract expressionist artist we will see how much vital communication happens with gesture alone.

22nd April

This week we go into water colours, keeping the felt sense of the gestures we explored in the previous week, we will encounter a small still life which you can assemble yourself from a variety of objects we will paint with water colour paint, soft brushes a tender yet powerful medium. Inspiration from a variety of artists such as William Turner, Cezanne and Picasso.