289 Maple Street, Contoocook, NH, 03229 USA
SMALL FORMAT LANDSCAPE PAINTING & DRAWING: EXPLORING COLOR FROM NATURE
Three-Day Small Format Outdoor Painting Workshop with Kathleen Jacobs
June 23, 24, 25, 2023
FRIDAY, SATURDAY AND SUNDAY
10am – 4pm
Grounding Stone Farm: organic blueberry farm and artist retreat.
289 Maple Street, Contoocook, NH
$525
Maximum of 12 students
Get material list: email kathleejacobs@groundingstonefarm.com
Working outside on the grounds of Grounding Stone Organic Blueberry Farm and a short ride to to the local mountain view, students will investigate and hone observational skills to draw and paint the natural beauty of our fields, trees, mountains and hills. Drawing and painting exercises will be used to help understand the distinctive color, shape, form and structure that naturally exist in our beautiful outside world.
- Individual attention will be given to each student with an emphasis on helping to find your vision, using your unique eye and imagination to interpret what you see as we look together at the tree branches, bushes, mass of forests, fields, rocks and mountains and local structures within the place.
- Composition will be one of many topics, using shape, color, light and structure as it relates to your painting and what nature presents to us.
- Drawing sketches will help students to understand a simplified sense of space to help find the natural compositional forms that exist, without an over analysis of detail or using tired, formulaic means to make a painting.
- A slide presentation and lecture is included to learn and discuss key landscape masters to include Corot, Cezanne, Degas, Avery, Morandi, Diebenkorn, and many contemporary artists of distinction.
- Painting will not exceed 10” x 10", unless very experienced with working larger outside
- All levels of experience welcome.
- Material List provided.
- Housing not provided but a list of inviting local inns or hotels to stay for the weekend will be provided after signing up.
- Lunch can be picked up each day within 5 minutes of the farm in downtown Contoocook.
- Call for any questions about the workshop.
Painting Trip to Florence and Tuscany Italy
PAINTING TOUR OF FLORENCE AND TUSCAN HILL TOWNS
In the Light of Italy, Following Corot
Plein Air Landscape Sketching and Painting with Kathleen Dunn Jacobs
SEPTEMBER 24-OCT 3 2023
Plein Air Small Format Landscape Drawing and Painting workshop with Kathleen Jacobs
- Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance, with its rich tapestry of history depicted in its architecture, sculptures, and paintings
- A stay in the Tuscan countryside, with its grapevines and cypress trees
- Tuscany’s medieval towns and villages: Monteriggioni, San Gimignano, Volpaia, Radda in Chianti, and others, equally well-preserved
- Departure limited to 12 participants to optimize your artistic experience
Skill Level: All levels
The hazy landscape paintings and poetic scenes of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot helped define plein air painting as an important painting genre of all time. Like Corot, students will paint in the open air in the beautiful Tuscan landscape. Each day we will look at the landscape as Corot did, and interpret the soft color-palette of Italy, characterized by the light creating close tonal color relationships that are characteristic of Italy and of Corot’s work. We will seek to express the dreamlike quality that reflects a desire to stay true to our "first impression" in order to capture the quiet dignity of the natural world.
About this class:
In this class students will start with intuitive sketches of the natural hills, trees and foliage of the Italian landscape. Students look carefully to make pencil studies first in order to soak up the special view and personal experience. Working in any medium, students will proceed to make small paintings in one sitting. Like Corot, students will look to investigate composition, using form, shape, line and color while working in nature. Emphasis will be placed on creating a sense of space, mood and feeling of the setting, without over analysis. We will use the historic color palette of Corot and use color to express emotion.
For over 25 years, Kathleen Jacobs has painted and revered the natural world in her work. Her painting career changed when she visited The Frick Collection in New York, where she found herself standing transfixed before The Arch of Constantine and the Forum, Rome (by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. Through his choice of close tonal pigments, smoothly painted and thinly applied brushstrokes, Corot was able to create a composition that conveys beauty, impressive strength and serenity. She recognized a balanced, orderly composition extracted from the landscape.
The painting is small, though despite the size, it spoke volumes. She was so awed by the sense of calm that this one, small landscape painting could instill in her that she changed the focus of her work from large figurative paintings to small intimate landscapes.
To get information and to be put on the list to attend just email: kathleenjacobs@groundingstonefarm.com or subscribe below and mention the destination or trip that interests you.
About Kathleen Dunn Jacobs
Kathleen's website: www.kathleendjacobs.com
- Kathleen’s work evokes her reverence for the natural landscape. Her love of the natural world is evident in her soft tonally related colors that evoke a sense of calm. Her work has been exhibited alongside the landscape paintings of contemporary artists Wolf Kahn, March Avery, Richard Yarde, Lois Dodd, Stuart Shils, amongst others and is collected nationally and internationally. She has work included in the corporate and private collections throughout the US. Jacobs attended the University of Massachusetts where she received a BFA in Painting and Art History. She earned the University Chancellor's Talent Award for outstanding achievement and subsequently awarded another scholarship to study abroad at the La Napoule Art Foundation in France. She earned her MFA in Visual Arts, Critical Theory and Painting from Lesley University College of Art and Design in Cambridge, MA. Formerly the Director of Art Education at the Currier Museum of Art, she now teaches painting and drawing for various art educational institutions. She paints full time out of her studio at her farm, in Contoocook, NH where she lives with her family and grows certified organic blueberries.