Abstraction in Nature
4 Day Workshop | This course is completed
This course will take inspiration from the wild and diverse worlds of flora / fauna / fungi, seeking to abstract these forms into dynamic, rhythmic compositions. If you are awed by the natural world and curious to find ways to channel that into paint, this course is for you. Together we will discuss and analyze paintings by modern and contemporary artists, and immerse ourselves in the patterns that repeat across nature at microscopic and macroscopic scales. Students will be guided through exercises that sharpen their compositional skills and experiment with paint handling in order to gain more confidence and fluency.
Base Tuition: $333 + Material Fee: $10 = $343 Total
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- What You Will Learn
- How to identify and work with different patterns found in nature
- Develop greater facility with paint handling
- How to translate rhythm into dynamic compositions
- 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 be sure to keep receipts incase materials need to be returned.
- 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
Rachel Crummey
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.