JULY 2011

W0711MCF:  STEWART MCFARLANE:  Creating Narrative and Mood Using Colour and Form (Oils & Acrylics)  (MASTERCLASS)  Thursday 7 to Sunday 10 July 2011 (4 days)       9.30am to 4.30pm  Earlybird $429 due 7 June 2011.  Price $455 thereafter.  Daily price $120. Working from life where possible to produce small studies of landscapes, still life and figurative studies to be juxtaposed to a large canvas to create a narrative.  Suit students who prefer colourful, stylized paintings.

AUGUST 2011

No workshops scheduled

SEPTEMBER 2011

W0911LAW:  JAN LAWNIKANIS:  Coloured Pencils:  Focus on Textures 1.  ONE DAY ONLY:  Saturday 3 September 2011        9.30am to 4.30pm  Earlybird $97 due 3 August 2011.  Price $115 thereafter. This workshop will give students of all artistic abilities the skills to handle coloured pencils effectively and creatively.  Suitable for absolute beginners

W0911BYR:  KRISSTIE BYRNNE:  Alla Prima Portraiture (Oils).  Saturday 17; Sunday 18; Monday 19 September 2011 (3 days)        9.30am to 4.30pm.  Earlybird $320 due 17 August  2011.  Price $350 thereafter.  Daily price $125. Alla Prima or Direct Painting means finishing a painting in one sitting.  Learn about drawing, colour, values, edges and temperature changes.  Suitable for absolute beginners.  Acrylic painters are also welcome.

OCTOBER 2011

W1011LAW:  JAN LAWNIKANIS:  Flowers in Watercolour.  ONE DAY ONLY:  Saturday 15 October 2011        9.30am to 4.30pm.  Earlybird $97 due 15 September 2011.  Price $115 thereafter. This workshop will help you develop professional techniques unique to watercolour.  Suitable for absolute beginners

NOVEMBER 2011

W1111LAW:  JAN LAWNIKANIS:  Coloured Pencils:  Focus on Textures 2.  ONE DAY ONLY:  Saturday 12 November 2011        9.30am to 4.30pm  Earlybird $97 due 12 October 2011.  Price $115 thereafter. This workshop will give students of all artistic abilities the skills to handle coloured pencils effectively and creatively.  Suitable for absolute beginners

W1111BYR:  KRISSTIE BYRNNE:  Alla Prima Portraiture and Still Life (Oils).  Saturday 26; Sunday 27; Monday 28 November 2011 (3 days)        9.30am to 4.30pm  Earlybird $320 due 26 October 2011.  Price $350 thereafter.  Daily price $125. Alla Prima or Direct Painting means finishing a painting in one sitting.  Learn about drawing, colour, values, edges and temperature changes.  Suitable for absolute beginners.  Acrylic painters are also welcome.

TERM CLASSES – DAY and EVENING

MONDAYS

Classes on Mondays begin again February 2012.

THURSDAYS

TH211AM:  ALAN MORRISON:  Studio Painting & Mentoring.  Thursday 10.00am to 1.00pm (3 hours)  Dates:  18, 25 August; 8, 15, 22 September; 13, 20 October; 10, 17, 24 November 2011 (10 weeks)  No classes:  1, 29 September; 5, 27 October; 3 November 2011.  Earlybird $477 due 24 January 2011.  Price $505 thereafter. Assisting artists of all levels develop individual directions in painting in order to achieve personal art goals under mentorship and guidance.  Pro-rata available – start anytime.

TH211BYR:  KRISSTIE BYRNNE:  Painting from Photographs Using a Creative Approach (Oils/Acrylics)  Thursday 6.30pm to 9.30pm (3 hours)  Dates:  15, 22 September; 13, 20 October; 10, 17, 24 November 2011 (7 weeks) No Classes:  29 September; 6, 27 October; 3 November 2011. Earlybird $310 due 11 August 2011.  Price $360 thereafter. Learn how to develop interesting and colourful paintings by taking ideas from photographs.  All subjects.  Suitable for absolute beginners.  Pro-rata available – start anytime.

FRIDAYS

FR211HAN:  MAUREEN HANSEN:  Colour and the Masters (Oils)  Friday 10.00am to 2.00pm (4 hours) Dates:  9, 16, 23, 30 September; 14, 21, 28 October; 11, 18, 25 November 2011 (10 weeks)  Earlybird $630 due 1 September 2011.  Price $680 thereafter. A semester of study of light, depth and colour, with references such as the Fauvists and Impressionism will help you understand how colour can improve your paintings.  Pro-rata available – start anytime.

I used to wear gloves all the time when I painted, but I have become more methodical in my approach. Once I have all my paint and brushes laid out before me, I am usually devoid of accidents and can paint without gloves. Rarely do I ever get any paint on my clothes, however wearing an apron does give you a false sense of security.

Clayton J. Beck once said, “And for my next demonstration I will paint wearing a white tuxedo”

I had recently started to try to keep all my paint tubes impeccably clean and neat, by wrapping them in sticky-tape to preserve the label so I could tell the name of the colour at a glance, and to fix splits in the paint tubes. So, now I had some time away from classes I went through my paint kit to tidy up and put some of my older paint tubes that I hadn’t used in a while through my paint wringer to push the paint to the top part of the tube. Then I was going to wrap them in sticky tape to try to clean everything so I would stop getting paint everywhere.

I had always tried to push the paint out from the bottom of the tube by hand, but this particular tube was old and I hadn’t used it for a while. Anyway it burst, and paint spurted onto my face, clothes and hands. What a mess!  Obviously I hadn’t wrapped this tube with sticky tape. I figured it would be easier to wrap it after it was neatly squeezed. Not anymore.

My New Years Resolution (once I clean the lids of my paint tubes and then the trolley) is to take Clayton’s advice. Slow down to become faster. If I take my time to keep each tube clean, and clean any spills around the lid each time I paint, I will become faster because clean up time will be shorter and neater, and therefore safer, which means more time to paint. So, the moral of the story is some learning and wisdom I have found the hard way:

• When squeezing a paint tube point it down and away from your face, and if you think there is a chance it has split, squeeze it inside a cardboard box
• Don’t oversqueeze the tube
• Have plenty of clean rags available for emergencies (old white t-shirts are the best)
• Use absorbent paper towels to wipe brushes on and for cleaning paint tube lids
• Have a garbage bag attached to your easel or trolley to put all rubbish in such as empty paint tubes, paper towels, dried paint etc. When at the venue, take home your rubbish bag
• When doing messy jobs like cleaning your paint lids, wear disposable gloves. The gloves remind you not to scratch your face, touch your furniture or anything else for that matter. If your kit is in a mess try only wearing your gloves while squeezing out your paint onto your palette.

From a student’s and educational point of view, the changes to the Queensland College of Art is that there is now the flexibility to study the subjects you want to study (in theory anyway) which is a  fantastic idea, allowing students to complete part of a design and business degree, which could be utilised to turn their idea “… into businesses” (p.5).  It is however only part of the story, and if students wanted to get a job, they would need to go on to a Masters degree to complete the particular path they want to specialise in, which is a big turnoff from a students perspective, as it means time out of your life, and your reward is a huge HECS debt.

The whole ethos of education is to churn out employees.  Yet 2010 and beyond is the start of a new era where creativity in design, combined with some good old fashioned common sense, might help to get humanity to start to build a sustainable future, with an economic system that is honest, but still allows the entrepreneur to bring to market products that change our world for the better.  Introducing arts into the national curriculum is a start which means Australians will “… end up more of a European type culture where the majority of the population comes to appreciate good design, and come to appreciate the importance of the arts in the community …” (p.6) and that we might catch up and perhaps one day overtake “… those countries that consistently outperform us in innovation …” (p.7)

However getting back to the crux of the question, I personally believe you will be severely disadvantaged and short-changed if you attend university if you want to go specifically to Art School to learn how to be a painter.  You will be taught how to develop “… intellectual conceptual skills, the capacity to think, problem solve, communicate, advocate, challenge, question, through processes of making.  Whether it results in a finished artwork is much less important …” (p.4).

These ideals are in and of themselves noble pursuits, however I’m particularly starting to question the role of talent, as unfortunately technology has spawned the use of enablers and wannabe’s.  With QUT’s creative industries terminology wrapped up in a “… mausoleum of rhetoric …” (p.7), is it little wonder the rubbish produced could even be termed art and entered into an art competition? For instance, take the presitigious 2009 Stan & Maureen Duke Gold Coast Art Prize.  Upon entering the room we were greeted by the Exhibition host who told us not to stand on the thing that looks like a stage, because its actually ” … one of the artworks on display”.  Now when someone has to TELL me that an object is a piece of art there is something wrong.  Anyone with reasonable common sense can tell the difference between art and furniture.  It is akin to shoe shine boys giving stock tips just before the Great Depression.  It tells me that the pendulum has swung too far, and I believe change is imminent.

I’m starting to think that people have lost their minds?  Surely after the Great Contemporary Art Bubble burst, people would start to realise that paintings produced in a manufacturing environment, aka Damian Hirst and China’s manufacturing arm, supported by Interior Design shops/galleries that import paintings from China and then mark them up 400-500%, have infiltrated the heart of what the dictionary describes as art.

Back in 1993, the first year that Queensland College ofArt amalgamated with Griffith University, I spent two years studying printmaking as my minor (Painting was my major) all because the ceramics class was booked out by students majoring in photography, and now I have a HECS debt, a proportion of which was of absolutely no use to me, courtesy of the Federal Government.  It did however teach me an important lesson, Art School as we knew it, was in decline.

Looking back almost twenty years, I have seen the Queensland College of Art, which had a great reputation, fall into disrepair.  Now folios have disappeared, replaced by entrance scores with courses that have twice as many students, half as many staff, even less contact hours and an ever decreasing budget.  However, as I can attest, the arts can attract some of the best thinkers in our society, those in the medical profession and the sciences, as QCA have “… some of the highest entrance scores in the university.” (p.6)  For the moment though, that leaves some very capable people perhaps being denied places in favour of people who fit the university’s academic outcomes.  The problem with tests, particularly academic tests, is that they don’t take into account emotional intelligence, which I have found is THE most important component in any endeavour.

Arrogance mixed with ignorance can be dangerous and is a barrier to learning, combined with greed and narcissitic (egotistical) decisions bring you things like black spots on our highways.  To cite an example building the turning lane of the Logan Motorway onto the right hand fast lane of the Ipswich Motorway, causing the Motorway to back up as people slow down to make the turn safely.  Duh …!  How come we spend so much money making mistakes, that with a bit more listening and a little bit more thinking, someone in authority would have noticed that that was a bad design idea?

Lets hope that 2010 is the beginning of the decade where we start to think a little more about the consequences of our actions.  The concept of universities was designed and supported by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle to teach thinking and wisdom, and finding wisdom through the arts, is one of the last bastions of the thinking mind.