F0618 Painting Venice: Oil Painting Traditions Techniques and Practice (formerly How light and atmosphere create forms that propel visual ideas)

The course is an introduction to the practice of painting outside of the studio, with oil paints in natural light and atmosphere.

Venice has been a source of inspiration to generations of painters. In this course, students will be encouraged to be visually and conceptually inventive in their responses to the city. the class will meet outside, on the streets and islands, in the churches, schools and museums. While developing technical skills required in observational painting, the students will explore how a sense of peace influences and propels ideas.

The class will be structured around various themes. Each theme will inaugurate a series of paintings. Periodically we will meet in a classroom for a group critique and to introduce the theme for the next series of paintings.

The course will combine the practical discipline of painting from focused observation with an introduction to the innovations in the great paintings from 16th century Venice.

The goal for the class is to broaden and deepen the students connections to their artwork and to their artwork and to the art of the past. The protean inventiveness of the 16 century Venetian painters was profoundly connected to a sense of place. Studying their work will open perceptual doors, enriching the contemporary views. The students will explore, through painting, how a place shapes a vision.