Details

The 8-month Training begins September 6.

Space is limited to 12 participants.

The act and practice of painting is a transformative experience. 

A painting is not simply a picture. A painting is a weaving of energy.

Through the act of painting we access our life-force and power.  Through the recognition and wielding of our inherent power we bring Presence more vividly into Form.  This is the Power of Painting.

This Fall I will be offering a unique training that radically recontextualizes our painting practice and provides an opportunity not only to strengthen our engagement with painting but to deeply strengthen the paintings themselves.

If you’ve been feeling the urge to paint — or perhaps you’ve been painting for some years but haven’t yet found your own personal, authentic way — this training is structured to bring you into a deeper and more empowered engagement.

Not only will we learn how to dig deeply into our painting and end up making stronger work, but the activity of painting itself can lead to a profound understanding of our essential self, an unveiling of our inherent power, and shift our relationship to the wider world.

While full of formal hands-on exercises, this offering emphasizes the relationship and interaction between the painter’s inner life and the development of the painting. In addition to the process-oriented and expressive aspects of the training, an essential part of the course focuses on how to formally arrive at an aesthetically strong painting – what that means, how to attain it, and how that is connected to our felt life.

We’ll be concerned with both the process — outer and inner — as well as the finished work as an object in the world, and how this deepening process leads to stronger, more powerful painting.

By providing an integrated process that includes your inner life together with specific formal ways of working, your painting process becomes inherently authentic and personally meaningful.

WHAT THE 8-MONTH TRAINING INCLUDES:

Weekly online sessions, 2.5 hour each — for discussion of the section material, demonstration of the exercises, conversation and feedback.

Biweekly meetings to discuss Course Readings – relevant essays, articles and readings that focus on various aspects of the course.  Tuesday mornings, 10:00am – 12:00pm, Mountain Time.

8 Individual Monthly Sessions for Each Participant, to Reflect on your Work, Development and Questions.

An Online Members-Only Group Page through Mighty Networks for Posts, Group Discussions, Feedback, and Weekly Critiques.

Session Recordings for Continual Access to the Ongoing Material.

The Training Schedule:

Section 1, 9/6 – 10/18 (no class 10/25): The Recontextualization / Painting as Inner Engagement, Part 1.  This first section provides an expansion of our understanding of painting beyond the current art world context into a larger historical and contemporary sense of human purpose and engagement. We begin exploring Foundational Drawing and Painting exercises as Mindfulness Practices: How Mark-making can Bring Us Fully into the Present Moment.  We will practice slowing down as we work, and perceptual analysis as a gateway for being present.  Objective accuracy becomes not an end in itself but a means towards experiential intimacy.  Online Demonstrations, with Participants encouraged to work alongside.  There will be ongoing Q&A and time to share our work. Topics that are covered:

• Empowering Our Individual Painting Practice
• Accessing Deep Life-Force In/Through Our Work
• Painting as a Life Practice
• Communal Interconnection and the Desire to Share the Work

Among the various exercises demonstrated and practiced will be:

• Blind Contour Drawing: working with a simple still life.
• Marking as Notation of Seeing: looking at the interior of our room.
• Measuring, Proportion and Geometry; working with a simple still life.
• Investigating Value Relationships; working from observation.

Section 2, 11/1 – 12/13: Painting as Inner Engagement, Part 2. We continue the exploration of Foundational Painting as a Mindfulness Practice as we move into Color. How the Search for Observed Tonality can Bring Us Fully into the Present Moment.  Online Demonstrations, with Participants encouraged to work alongside.  There will be ongoing Q&A and time to share our work.

In Part 2 we will work from a still life for a sustained investigation of the observed tonal relationships, providing an opportunity to slow way down and allow ourselves to enter into the felt perceptual moment.  The Foundational skill development of color mixing becomes a doorway into present moment awareness.

Section 3, 1/3 – 2/21: Painting as Creative Empowerment.   Often emotions such as anxiety, frustration or self-doubt keep us from our painting.   How can we reorient our relationship with difficult emotions in a way that empowers our work?  We will explore emotional energy as a catalyst for marking and making.  Online Demonstrations, with Participants encouraged to work alongside.  There will be ongoing Q&A and time to share our work.

The exercises will explore a range of emotional energies such as fear, anger, sadness, longing, and love.  Our marking will be in relation to both representational and non-representational imagery, working with a wide variety of materials.

Section 4, 2/28 – 4/25: Composition as an Awareness Practice.  We will study Composition as a Present Moment Improvisational and Creative Discipline.  We’ll look at Composition through the lens of Modern Masters such as Cezanne and Matisse. The section will provide an experiential exploration of the intuitive skills necessary to cultivate in order to bring the painting to Wholeness, and look at the implications for our own personal lives outside of the studio.

• Being Sensitive to the Whole Rectangle – The Secret of Peripheral Vision
• Compositional Basics – Visual Wholeness and Getting Un-Stuck
• How to Receive the Painting
• The Importance of Our Torso
• Studio Logistics – Good Light, a Neutral Wall, and Stepping-back Space
• The Role of Intuition and the Meaning of Waiting

Bonus Material: Painting as Interconnection.  Painting is a deeply solo creative activity.  It is also a powerful vehicle for human energetic interweaving and sharing.  We will explore possibilities for communal sharing of our work and how to structure it in a way that serves our larger creative life. Why that may be important for us and for the times we’re in. Topics discussed:

• Setting up Your Painting Practice
• The Desire to Show and Share – What is That?
• A Concurrence
• Painting as an Energetic Weave
• The Power and Importance of Presence

Course Includes:

• 8 Months of Weekly 2.5-hour Live Zoom Sessions Covering the Course Content
• Bi-weekly Zoom Sessions Discussing the Course Readings
• Weekly Critiques of Student Postings in the Online Course Room
• Monthly Individual Sessions covering Participants Personal Development, Questions and Work
• Thorough Step-by-Step Demonstrations of the Exercises with Live Ongoing Q&A
• 3 Continuous Camera Views for Close-ups of the Mark-making and Paint Handling
• Recordings of All the Zoom Sessions Available for Repeated Viewing
• A Members Only Online Course Room, through Mighty Networks (no ads or data-mining), for Sharing and Community Support

Additional Benefits Included:

• Free PDF of the Slide Presentation for “Establishing a Reliable Painting Practice”
• Free Video: “Drawing as an Essential Component for Creative Exploration”

Student Testimonials:

“Jordan’s teaching is a very heartfelt style of allowing me a way of looking deeper, digging into the unknown to find something richer, more joyful, and more meaningful in the question of why I continue to paint. I came away with many pearls to think over and revisit about my experience. One is feeling into the seeing.” – Michelle Jerome

“I was seeking a deeper understanding of what it means to paint, as well as guidance on how to find my personal ‘voice’ and strengthen my studio practice.  I could not have found a better teacher for this stage of my development.  Jordan’s classes have taught me the importance of deep engagement with my subject and how to achieve that engagement.  He has shown me how to become aware of and deploy the specific energies and impulses I bring to the studio each day, how to assess my work at each step toward completion, and how to approach my work with exploratory rigor that does not lapse into counterproductive laboriousness.  Jordan’s discussions are full of insight; his demos are outstanding; his critiques are honest, constructive and extremely helpful in sorting out a painting.  All of this has brought greater clarity, confidence and joy to my painting practice.” – Leslie Blackmon

“I first started working with Jordan several years ago. I had felt that my work was too tight, to say the least, and when we first met all I wanted was for Jordan to help me loosen up. And he did. But along the way he unlocked something else. I became aware of the power of being present in front of the canvas; the power of being mindful in the very act of mark making. This power of being-present-in-front-of-the-canvas is a gateway. It leads to the possibility of doing anything, of doing everything, of making choices in the very act of painting and mark making. Objective. Non-objective. Fast. Slow. Studied. Loose. Measured. Responsive. It opened up knowing what to do with my work. Where to go next. Through understanding this power of a painting practice — the power of painting.  What else can I say… Thanks, Jordan.” – Paul Rost.

The 8-Month Training tuition is $4,200.  When paid in full, a $240 discount is available, bringing the tuition to $3,960.

The $4,200 tuition can also be paid in 3, 6, or 12 monthly installments.  To pay in installments please click on “Learn More” next to the Affirm Logo under the Checkout Total.

Courses and Sessions separately priced are worth $5,280; the Training tuition provides a Savings of $1,080. Participants who have taken the 5-Week Intensive are also entitled to an additional $100 discount.

Coupon Codes:

If you are paying tuition in one payment use “one-payment discount”, without quotation marks, at checkout to receive the deduction.

If you are a past participant in the Painting as a Path of Awareness Intensive use “paapa past participant”, without quotation marks, at checkout to receive the deduction.

If you are paying tuition in one payment and also are a past participant of the Painting as a Path of Awareness Intensive use “one-payment and paapa past participant”, without quotation marks, to receive both deductions.

To register please click on the “+” sign below.

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