Dawn Stephens
The latest venue for the 'Freedom in Painting' roadshow was the Queens Arts Centre in Aylesbury. The theme for the 2-day painting workshop was 'Still Life', one of the major genres in Western art. After a talk on the history and lineage of still life painting - including discussion of the work of Chardin, Cezanne, Matisse, Braque, Soutine, Morandi, William Scott - the eleven artists were split into three groups. Each group set up their own still life of six objects which included objects brought in by the artists themselves. The morning was spent drawing: three very different exercises resulted in a wall of drawings that opened up several possibilities for painting.....
After lunch, when the paints came out, inevitably everything slowed down. Paint is a slower medium, with the added complexity of colour and wetness plus the artists were asked, initially to paint the still life as it was (with a twist) The aim over the next day and a half was to capture in paint the spirit, freedom and invention of the drawings. This certainly happened with everyone's work on the second day, which began with a freeing painting exercise. The resulting paintings are proof that a still life doesn't have to be still! Below is a gallery of the paintings from Day 2- to see the full gallery see Freedom in Painting Group
Amanda Curbishly
Antonia Glynne-Jones
Pippa Greensmith
Kalpna Mehta
Mitzi Delnevo
Erica Shipley
Brenda Hurley
Jo Rollnick
Diane Oldfield
Diane Bedser