Snapshots from My October Workshops

Shown from the top are: New Mexico, Provincetown and Cape Cod, a sketch from Boston, and Freeport, Maine.

I'm always too busy teaching to stop and take a photo of the class. I rely on students sending their pics, so if you can, please send me some and I'll post them.

New Jersey Reverie

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Memories of my workshops in New Jersey / November, 2014.

Casey Klahn / Artist's Banners at Crow Creek Farm, Goshen, New Jersey. Studios of Stan Sperlak. Photo: Stan Sperlak.

Crow Creek Farm / Stan Sperlak

Casey Klahn / Demo at Crow Creek Farm. Photo: Stan Sperlak.

 Casey Klahn / Demo at Stan's Studio.

Casey Klahn / Demo at Christina Debarry's Studio, Florham Park, NJ.

Boston Area Workshop Report

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North River Arts Society

Marshfield Hills, MA

Friday night demo.  I met numerous blog readers and Facebook friends on this trip.

We worked hard to plumb our reasons for creating pictures - our Artist's Ideas.  These are your personal agenda, apparent in every artwork you make.  Here you see a rare moment of fun in an otherwise demanding workshop.  

la Différance

A Landscape About Blue

Blue Trees in the Middle Distance
7 - 3/8ths" x 5.75"
Pastel
Casey Klahn

You can make a different painting - a painting and an idea that the world has never seen before.  Here are some ways to make it different.


Be authentic.  Have a new idea, and think of subjects that evoke a response in your own self.  I like to make images of the Hoquiam River that aren't sunny, but that do evoke a feeling of hope and resolve.   


Work with some amount of personal involvement.  That has happened when you have struggled with an image.  Perhaps you lost track of the time.


Don't think; see.


Keep your ideas and your shapes big.


How do you work to gain authenticity?


Next:  101 Blog Post Ideas.  You will have no more excuses.

I Guess By Now You Know That I Don't Have a Method

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Lose The Conventions.

There isn't any magic method for working in the colorist style. So, what is there to teach in a workshop setting? Much! Because in your pastel bag, in addition to your supplies, you also carry around a set of conventions. They are your tried and true, "works every time," methods of working on your pictures.

I want to press those out of you.  The things you see when you search for painting subjects are ever new and fresh.  Can your paintings be new, also?

Hoquiam River Bright 10" x 14.75"Pastel & CharcoalCasey Klahn

Henri Matisse wrote, "We move towards serenity through the simplification of ideas and form.......Details lessen the purity of lines, they harm the emotional intensity, and we choose to reject them. It is a question of learning - and perhaps relearning the 'handwriting' of lines. The aim of painting is not to reflect history, because this can be found in books. We have a higher conception. Through it, the artist expresses his inner vision." Reference.


Workshops.


Next Workshop:  Oakland (El Cerrito), California.  November 5 & 6, 2011. Contact me via e-mail.

Workshop Demands

The following few posts will be my after-action review of the workshop that I held in the Portland area last Spring.  The axiom goes that the teacher learns as much, if not more, than the students in the process of teaching.  Here is my chance to express what I learned at my own workshop titled "Never See Your Pastels The Same Way Again."

Workshop Photos.


Our workshop goals were these:

1. Produce a pastel (painting) that says something new.
2. Gain an appreciation for universal elements of art via Modernist and Colorist ideas.
3. Lose something precious; find new strength.

Art workshops can be demanding on the artist-student, and I have attended ones where I have lost sleep at night because of the challenges to integrating new ideas that the instructor introduces.  So deep and integrated are our creative ideas and patterns that grafting truly new knowledge onto them is an emotional move. 

I liked the advice I read from Wolf Kahn about teaching.  He said, "make demands" of your students.  If you don't bring anything new to the table, why teach at all?

Find out what happened in the posts to follow.

Workshops.

Next Workshop:  Oakland (El Cerrito), California.  November 5 & 6, 2011. Contact me via e-mail.

Photo credit: Katherine van Schoonhoven.