Abstract Painting and Wabi Sabi

Course dates: November 26th - 28th 2018 (Monday - Wednesday)

The aim of this course is to enjoy the materials and allow the painting to evolve as you work. We will be experimenting with careful layering of paint and repetitive brush strokes, with varying rhythms, to create densely constructed forms which shift and change through the process. We will be looking at artists who use multiple processes pouring oil and inks on linen.

The work will be created using paints, pigments, inks, oil paint and dyes onto saturate surfaces, as well as using bending, wrinkling and folding. Out of this repetitive, engaging and meditative approach, the work just makes itself. This is very much an Eastern philosophy connecting the inner self to the outside world. We will be looking at wabi sabi which is a concept of Japanese aesthetics; the celebration of the beauty of the handmade process and nature, the imperfections, incompleteness and ever changing qualities. We will look at Korean artists of the Dansaekhuwa movement and also western contemporary artists who have this approach at the centre of their practise. There will be demonstrations throughout the course , students will be led by the tutor and encouraged to let the work lead them .