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The act and practice of painting is a transformative experience. 

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

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 one-day workshop is structured to bring you into a deeper and more empowered engagement.

Not only can 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 and 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 workshop, an essential aspect of the day 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.

• • Exercise 1: Blind Contour Drawing
  • Exercise 2: Cross Contour and Tactile Projection
  • Exercise 3: Marking as Notation of Seeing
  • Exercise 4: Measuring Proportion and Geometry as a Mindfulness Practice

• • Exercise 1: Marking with Anxiety/Doubt
  • Exercise 2: Marking with Frustration/Anger
  • What next?

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

• • Setting up Your Painting Practice
  • Painting as an Energetic Weave
  • The Power and Importance of Presence

Course Includes:

• 5 Live Zoom Sessions
• 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

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

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

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