Framing The View

Course Dates January 31^st -  Febuary 2^nd  (Wed - Friday) 2024

A three day practical course exploring the Window in and through drawing and painting. The window has long been an immensely important subject for artists. A framed hole in the wall offering views from the inside out and the outside in. The painting of a window immediately locates the viewer spatially in relation to the subject and engages the viewer in an exploration of their own feelings and recollections of similar experiences. Light enters the room from outside and at night the electric light from inside illuminates the darkness.

Gaston Bachelard writes of how when walking in the landscape at night the light from a distant farmhouse seems to exert a hugely powerful response of longing and desire. In Mattisse and Richard Diebenkorn we see the painting, the painted widow and the real window in dialogue allowing an exploration of pictorial space, physical prescence and the role of the picture plane. In Hodgkin and Lois Dodd we see the role of the window frame and the edge of the painting explored with an almost trompe l’oeil effect. Hammershoi evokes the magic of mote filled shafts of light and the reverie induced where time slows down and silence reigns.

In preparation for this course, I would like you to take photographs of windows from inside and out, to include curtains, wall papers, brick work, and window ledge objects if there are any. Do this at different times and under different light conditions. Windows of all kinds. Rainy windows, dirty ones and ones with annoying reflected light. ‘Bad’ photos are to be particularly prized as they are so often more useful for painting. These photographs will be helpful and interesting in their own right but will also become the source material for your drawings and paintings.

• We will be making drawings on paper on day 1.
• Painting with acrylic on paper on day 2.
• Painting with acrylic on canvas on day 3.
• There will be slide shows of relevant historical and contemporary artists at the beginning of each day and after lunch.
• Please bring with you a selection of acrylic paints and brushes and some charcoal and an erasor.