Colour and Abstraction (NEW)

Course dates: Feb 6th - Feb 8th  ( Monday - Wednesday)

There is something magic about pure colour squeezed from a tube, something richly beautiful about the un-selfconscious colour relationships that develop on your paint pallete as you work. Paint behaving as paint, not being forced to look like something else, with colour its principal optical component. The Colour Field painters of the 50s and 60s sought by the exclusion of representation from their work to exploit the potential of colour to create a new and powerfully expressive painting. Starting by looking at the work of Rothko, Newman and Still this three day practical course will encourage you to develop your own personal engagement with this most potent of pictorial elements. Working in series on paper and canvas you will learn to use your intuitive responses to create a developmental process where you take control of the critical evaluation. Each day will begin with a slide show of relevant historical and contemporary painting and end with a review of the days work.

Inspired by the recent Goya exhibition and the way he painted fabrics, as well as the still lives of Morandi, Matisse, Soutine, Braque, Tricia Gillman