Painting: Abstraction in Nature
10 Week Class | Available
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, Joan Mitchell, Giorgio Griffa, and Alma Thomas. We will work from photographs, as well as from observation, exploring compositional strategies that create rhythm and harmony. The course will feature guided exercises focusing on composition and paint handling, as well as an extended independent painting project where students will be encouraged to apply what they have learned in their own way.
Base Tuition: $490 + Material fee: $10 = $500 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
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.