For our latest Online 'Freedom in Painting' workshop we looked at the life and work of Nicolas de Stael, a leading figure in European postwar painting, with his distinctive language, pared-down compositions and expressive colour. . As always our ambition was not to simply paint in the style of De Stael but to look in depth at De Staels's paintings, ideas and processes and channel this into our own painting.
In advance, the artists were asked to choose landscape or Still Life as their subject and bring along studies/drawings to the workshop.
Artists studies
Jan Bunyan's studies of weeping willows and water
The course began with an introductory talk and slideshow, highlighting the radical shifts in De Stael's paintings in a relatively short career, working on the borderline between abstraction and figuration. De Stael's quest was for significant form, a way of doing justice to what he saw and what he felt doing it.
After the talk, I demonstrated the first group exercise: taking a simple shape, a De Stael 'block', a circle or triangle and painting it six different ways, finding unity, difference, interest in sameness.
Carol Hayslip
Throughout his career, De Stael's paintings were often sourced in memory and from simple line drawings in his notebooks. Taking this lesson, the artists were asked to further reduce their studies into simple line drawings, where shapes and negative spaces subvert reality, opening up new freedoms and possibilities. You can see this in Carol's work above where a different drawing can lead to a painting with a different emphasis.
Over the 2 days, the artists developed their paintings further, punctuated by individual tutorials and further demonstrations, as I worked on my 'Red Cranes, Falmouth' painting. As you can see from the striking paintings in the gallery below,our artists successfully tuned-in to the spirit and ambitions of De Stael.
'True painting always tends to all aspects, that is to say, towards the impossible sum of the present moment, the past and the future'
ARTISTS GALLERY
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ARTISTS COMMENTS:
'Enjoyed the workshop enormously - a brilliant introduction to De Stael's life and work - loved that images were also sent for reference - enjoyed the simple but clever initial excercises that helped launch us - pressure with time and getting ready for tutorials helped push boundaries and new ways of working - seeing how Ashley worked so flexibly over composition in oils was liberating and incredibly helpful - also hearing and seeing how other's worked.
Enjoy that I can listen to Ashley wise and considered comments rooted in so much experience - as a result I got a lot out of the tutorials - and also the final group discussion - seeing everyone's work - hearing and giving feedback' ANNA BADAR.
'I really enjoyed the workshop. I think the best bits were the interesting research you did at the beginning and the first exercise to get us going. I hadn’t done much painting for a while and it inspired me to get going' BARRY KELLINGTON.
'Thank so much Ashley and Denise for a great enjoyable informative course' MITZI DELNEVO
'Enjoyed the workshop – good to be painting and part of a group again' JAN BUNYAN