From Inspiration to Composition

What separates a single successful painting from a body of work that sustains you for years? Vision — your own deeply felt, clearly articulated relationship with a subject that is genuinely yours.

This workshop is about finding that. And then building from it.

Over ten Tuesday evenings, we’ll work through the full arc of bringing an idea into painting. We’ll begin at the beginning: how to locate your authentic subject matter, how to recognize what you’re actually drawn to and why, and how to begin developing a point of view that is specific to you. From there we’ll move into composition — how to think about structure not as a formula but as an expression of meaning — and palette, exploring how color choices can be made in direct response to the emotional and conceptual core of your subject rather than convention or what reality or the photograph dictates.

A significant portion of the workshop will be devoted to photography, because for painters working from photographic reference, the quality of that reference determines much of what becomes possible. We’ll discuss camera settings and lighting conditions that serve painters, and we’ll talk about how to work with your models — how to direct, collaborate, and create the conditions for something true to emerge. Students will share their photographs and we’ll look at them together, discussing what’s working and why.

From there, we’ll move into Photoshop — not as a technical course, but as a focused conversation about how to process and edit your images so that they become genuinely useful painting references. What makes a great photo reference is often very different from what makes a beautiful photograph, and that distinction matters enormously once you’re standing in front of a canvas. We’ll talk about what to preserve, what to eliminate, what to watch for, and how to build a reference image that supports rather than constrains your painting process.

By the end of the ten weeks, you’ll have one strong, richly conceived photo reference for one painting — but the idea behind it will be so open, so full of possibility, that it becomes the beginning of a body of work. Yours. One that can carry you forward from one painting to the next, unfolding and deepening over years.

Enrollment is limited. Each student will have the opportunity to share work and receive direct feedback in a small, focused group.