Looking to the Barbizon School, and the founding figures of Modern Art such as Van Gogh, Cezanne and Munch, we become aware of the interaction between Nature and the Subjective Consciousness in the painted image. Working in the presence of Nature and opening yourself to the direct stimulation and challenge presented by this process is a long, yet ever-renewable source of personal development and discovery. This path continues through the work of great American artists like Georgia O’Keefe, Charles Burchfield, Marsden Hartley, Jackson Pollock, and well beyond into the present.
We’ll begin by drawing and paint sketching outdoors, developing a series of compositions and focus on résonant motifs extracted from the “plein-air” experience. Participants will be encouraged to evolve source sketches into structured paintings, retaining the essential quality of their initial impressions.