a few questions:

- do you ever forget who you are?

- how do you see what you don’t know is there?

- are you able to find your way without knowing the way?

- are you making it up as you go or sticking to formulas someone taught?

-where is the source of your decision making?

-do you recognize ‘accidents’ as full of possibility or do you marginalize them,   playing it safe with recipes and rules?

- how many questions can go unanswered and which ones do you pay attention to?

This will not be a class devoted to making pretty pictures that galleries might want.

Instead, we will address observation as a path of tough interrogation with no fixed or predetermined sense of destination and certainly no consensual idea of ‘finish’.

An observationally rooted painting is not only about what is seen, but also about you, your felt point of view and most importantly, what is evolving on the working surface.

Along the way many of us deny what is happening intuitively, calling it wrong, forcing it into acceptable subjugation and also, usually killing it.

On the first day, before painting, some foundational emphasis will be placed on drawing as the critical choreographic fuel for the visual thought engine. Painting IS drawing, but most of us don’t draw as a daily illuminating process.

For this class we will work with a clothed model but not at all for ‘anatomy’ and the room will also be a consideration, painting with acrylic paint on paper. Acrylic dries quickly, is less toxic in the air than oil and for those of us who think that oil paint is the most manly and serious approach and acrylic less so, it will give us another way of considering what is possible.

And this is NOT a class for taking home trophies but rather for augmenting, modifying and enhancing the way that we think visually, offering the thought tools for approaching our work with more deliberate, visual muscle tone.

a participant’s response to a recent class:

Stuart’s workshop takes you on a path of discovery of your own resources as a painter. With the focus on a few paramount concepts and by means of powerful tools, one learns that the key to painting lies in asking the right questions. From the technical (where is the light, what shape is the light, what temperature is the shadow…), to the gestalt (what can I do without, what is missing, how does it feel), to the philosophical (what should I paint and why should i), to the existential (what is the meaning). I feel like I went hoping for a fish and I came back with a fishing rod.’

— IM