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Painting: Abstraction in Nature

8 Week Class | FULL

Adult: Intermediate to Advanced

May 1, 2024-June 19, 2024

10:00 AM-1:00 PM on Wed

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$395.00 CAD

This course will examine ways of working with the natural world as inspiration for abstract compositions. Classes will include presentations featuring modernist and contemporary abstract painters who draw from nature in innovative ways including: Hilma af Klint, Agnes Martin, Giorgio Griffa, and Etel Adnan. We will explore the golden ratio, a mathematical proportion found throughout nature and used by artists and designers to create rhythm and harmony. The first half of the course will feature guided exercises focusing on composition and paint handling; the second half of the course will include an extended independent painting project.

Base Tuition: $385 + Material Fee: $10 = $395 Total
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  • What You Will Learn:

    - How to identify and work with different patterns found in nature

    - How to apply the golden ratio effectively in abstract compositions

    - How to translate rhythm, colour, and light into paint

    - Key terms and concepts related to contemporary abstraction

    - Develop confidence in your ability to create abstract compositions from different types of source material, including from observation and from photographs

  • Please keep your receipts incase you need to return items.

    - Sketchbook (9” x 12” or larger, 90lb paper or heavier; suitable for drawing and

    wet media; Canson mixed media pad is a good example)

    - Paint set (acrylic or other water based paint) for guided exercises

    - Canvas paper or other prepared surface for guided exercises (12” x 16” or

    larger)

    - Brushes, rags, palette knife, palette

Crummey, Rachel

Rachel is a visual artist and writer of settler descent based in Toronto. With a background in abstract painting, poetry, and contemplative practice, she is currently learning from non-linear intelligences through collaboration with fungi. In 2022, she joined the research framework SALT (the Institute for Sensual Awareness, Language, and Touch) with artist Tara Dougans. Her paintings have been exhibited most recently at the plumb and MKG127 (Toronto) and McBride Contemporain (Montreal). She has been an artist in residence with Open Studio (Toronto) and the Salzburger Kunstverein (Austria). She is a recipient of the Joseph Plaskett Foundation’s Nancy Petry Award for emerging painters (2015) and she holds an MFA from Guelph University. She gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.