Spring 2023 : Class : Figure and Landscape into Still Life: Elizabeth Geiger
How can you use the work of the Masters to inform your own painting? This 5 week course will address still life composition by studying paintings from other genres – figurative painting and landscape – to increase creative visual problem solving with the help of painters from art history. By removing the literalness of subject matter and focusing instead on abstract design principles, painters start to internalize ways of relating parts to the whole and to create aggregate shapes which help us all expand beyond our predictable default choices. Most of the greatest painters learned this way – by visiting museums and digesting what they saw. Each participant will choose one figurative image (then one landscape), study its underlying geometry and divisions, draw from it, then set up parallel still life in response to it, finally painting that set up with the image nearby. The goal is to practice dissecting and translating a painting, so as to use this process in your own studio practice.
Summer 2023 : Class : Plan a Working Vacation: An Intense Introduction to Beginner Drawing & Painting: Janly Jaggard
Summer 2023 : Class : Principles of Three Movements in Art History: Classical, Baroque, and Modern: Elizabeth Geiger
Spring 2023 : Class : The Next Step: Janly Jaggard
You have already learned and are well practiced in the use of the formal elements and can successfully apply these to your artwork. If this is so, you might be ready to TAKE the NEXT STEP and to build towards personal style. You may well have already selected your medium of choice for continued practice.
In this short series of intense studio classes we can search for what interests you most about medium, method and subject. Anything is possible provided you have serious intent.
I will discuss work with each student one-on-one so your journey is personal to your own objectives although class critique and discussion are part of the program.
Students will be strongly encouraged to work independently between the 4 class meetings and to share that work with the class.
Spring 2023 : Class : Art as Exploration: Robert Stuart
Participants’ work in any media, including 3-D, will be reviewed with constructive criticism to foster a deepening discernment of strengths and challenges.
The class includes a visual presentation and discussion of works by historical and contemporary artists, especially from current museum and gallery exhibitions and art reviews.
By broadening awareness of our cultural heritage, we enrich our own works, gain new insights to develop our own voice.
Minimum number of students: 6 – maximum: 9
“I love this class so much because I get to see what other people do and I value the input given about my work. Plus I learn so much from being exposed to the many works you show us. Thanks for all your effort.” Nina Ozbey
Winter 2023 : Class : The Next Step – Session 2: Janly Jaggard
You have already learned and are well practiced in the use of the formal elements and can successfully apply these to your artwork. If this is so, you might be ready to TAKE the NEXT STEP and to build towards personal style. You may well have already selected your medium of choice for continued practice.
In this short series of intense studio classes we can search for what interests you most about medium, method and subject. Anything is possible provided you have serious intent.
I will discuss work with each student one-on-one so your journey is personal to your own objectives although class critique and discussion are part of the program.
Students will be strongly encouraged to work independently between the 4 class meetings and to share that work with the class.
Winter 2023 : Workshop : Pathways to ABSTRACTION: Javier Tapia
Arriving at a commitment for utilizing Abstraction as a system for expression is a long and complex process. Fortunately there are several issues that we can identify during this two day workshop that can help us elucidate and explain Abstraction as a mode for expression to produce artworks in a meaningful and powerful way.
We can begin to establish a set of important questions and observations that allow us to think more deeply and see with more clarity.
In order to ‘arrive’ at this special kind of ‘seeing’ one must try to begin by setting aside, ‘final’ a-priori answers that derive from ‘theories’, old and new, and the non-visual languages. The principle at play here is to continue to sensitize the eye, to focus on the visual formal tools being used, and to carefully examine what each of these ‘tools’-(line, format, scale, thick, thin, ease, release, color, surface, etc)-within this convention, are visually ‘doing’. The idea that should prevail for our two days is working towards taking big chances by adding ‘things’ to our work we previously did not allow ourselves to do.
This studio workshop will highly consider a critique element. It will also include an hour powerpoint presentation (on my work) as a springboard to begin to get a few ideas in the open, particularly regarding a personal history, on development of form, content and personal growth.
Participants should bring to the studio a work they consider “finished” or a series of images/photos (10) that are representative of what they have done for the past year. (We will have a short individual/group conversation about these works).
Participants are also encouraged to arrive with a project in mind (“invention of shapes”, for instance) or develop one during the workshop. We can have a short conversation about your initial thoughts, to provide you with a starting point.
Participants should choose a painting medium they feel familiar with. These may include: Oil, Acrylic or Watercolor.
Javier Tapia Image Courtesy of Reynolds Gallery
Winter 2023 : Workshop : How to Loosen Up Your Paintings: LYNN MEHTA
Learn strategies on how to paint loose and free while maintaining solid principles of design. Over the course of this two day workshop, we will work on many different exercises in order to create successful paintings that reflect personal confidence and boldness. The focus will be on obtaining a variety of approaches to add to your “artist’s toolbox”. This will include creating strong compositions, achieving color harmony, and maintaining correct values. We will paint from still life arrangements and photo references.
Students should bring their own photographic reference of landscapes, cityscapes, marine, people in the landscape, or still life. Lynn will bring some flowers for our exercises, as well, since painting from life is so important.
Oil painters and acrylic painters of all levels will benefit from this workshop. All instruction will be in oil, and will include painting demonstrations by the instructor.
Winter 2023 : Workshop : Introduction to Figure drawing: Kathleen Carey Hall
This workshop is designed to give you the confidence to draw the life model, without the need for detailed knowledge of anatomy. We will break down the complex human form into simplified shapes, go over basic measuring and proportions, and emphasize the importance of gesture. Designed with the beginner in mind but suitable for those with prior figure drawing experience as well.
Winter 2023 : Lecture : Impressionism – How a Shocking New Art Movement Came to be and Ushered in Modern Art: Mary Shira
Using lectures and images, we explore how the Neoclassicism of the early 19th Century clashed with Romanticism in the Age of Revolution and culminated in Realism whose ordinary and everyday subjects gave rise to the Impressionist Movement.
Winter 2023 : Lecture : It All Starts with a Dot – Understanding how artists make art: Mary Shira
Starting with the basic Elements: Line, Shape, Value and Color we explore how a line when connected becomes a shape and values make that shape three dimensional. Color adds an emotional element that supports the mood of every work of art. Using lecture, images (Powerpoints), handouts and drawing exercises we explore the rewards of making art (communicating visually), heightening our attention (visual awareness), engaging our emotions and building a sense of accomplishment.
Winter 2023 : Lecture : The World of Giotto: Dr. Sara N. James
The world of Giotto – Early Italian Paintings: 14th Century. The rebirth of naturalism and narrative fresco painting begins at Assisi in the late thirteenth century and spreads from there to Florence, Orvieto and elsewhere in Central Italy. Discover the origins of the style and enjoy the marvelous storytelling!
Winter 2023 : Lecture : Renaissance Venice: Dr. Sara N. James
As the perfect introduction to the exhibition “Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice,” at the National Gallery of Art in Washington from November 20, 2022 – February 12, 2023, BSSS is pleased to offer four lectures on Early Renaissance Painting in Venice, from the Bellinis to Carpaccio. The lectures begin with Jacopo Bellini, gifted founder of the dynasty of Venetian painters of the Renaissance. It’s also the birth of oil painting, the use of canvas as support, and the ancestor of painting as we know it today.
Visit the the NGA website on Vittore Carpaccio – https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2022/carpaccio-renaissance-venice.html
Vittore Carpaccio, Saint Augustine in His Study, shortly after 1502, oil and tempera on canvas, Scuola Dalmata dei Santi Giorgio e Trifone, Venice
Photo credit: Matteo De Fina
Winter 2023 : Workshop : Vitreous Enamel workshop – Abstraction and Enamel Panels: Janly Jaggard
2 day workshop for beginner enamelers.
Enameling has so many technical prerequisites that often prevent room for innovation and aesthetics to be explored. I will walk you through the technical but focus on methods of exploring all the medium offers using firescale, fluxes, transparents and opaques, screens and stencils .
There is anticipation that each student will produce at least one resolved piece of work.
Maximum of 4 students.
Materials and equipment to bring:
- Sketchbook and notebook
- Drawings and /or personal photosS
- Sharp blades for cutting paper
- Slick newsprint (from giveaway newspapers)
- Small brushes
Winter 2023 : Workshop : Artist Lock In – DO NOT DISTURB: Janly Jaggard
This offering is about Time and Space, uninterrupted!!!! Janly Jaggard will provide artists with space for a TWO day of uninterrupted studio experience. She will function as coordinator, not instructor. Focus for the weekend will be on YOUR OWN WORK: each participant will use this time to be totally away from external distractions but have the support, feedback and community of a maximum of 9 others as we plan for critique amongst ourselves.