Have you ever been awestruck by the works of Raphael, Michelangelo, Hieronymus Bosch, Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, Rembrandt, or Vermeer? How about Max Beckman, Edwin Dickenson, Stanley Spencer, Kara Walker, Julie Mehretu, or Kerry James Marshall? These artists, spanning centuries, have created their unique worlds by drawing inspiration from diverse sources. Their final paintings resulted from a process of image development that I think of as a search for the “Visual Idea.”  In this workshop, we will go on a journey in search of visual ideas.
 
Envisioned for artists at all stages of artistic development working in any medium, we will concentrate on enhancing our artistic inspiration, focusing on developing our source material to either express a visual idea or to discover one. Participants will gather from various sources such as renowned art pieces, live models, photographs, and collages to create standalone works, or as preparation for future paintings. The primary objective is to improve image creation by incorporating multiple inspirations and combining them to create a cohesive final image that conveys a clear message. The aim is to discover captivating visual metaphors through a process that integrates form, content, idea, and technique. The workshop will commence with abstract composition, followed by the addition of figures, and culminate with collage elements.
 
This three-day workshop will start with a discussion of the Visual Ideas in masterworks and the utility of master studies. On day two we will draw from the live model, focusing on quick gesture poses as a way to build on and respond to our master studies.  On the final day, we will bring together the drawings from days one and two with a mixed media approach that includes photo sources, and collage to create our narrative images and worlds. We will move from dry media such as drawing into wet media like Gouache and Acrylic paint.  We will explore and transform our images, looking for how the under-laying structure creates a kind of stage-set or scaffolding for the image to develop. The power of a visual work is found not just in the stories that it evokes but in the visual hierarchies of line, shape, space, plane, value, texture, and color.  Our approach offers the chance to play with possibility, to loosen the grip of any single source, and allow for our discovered/invented images to be even more dynamic, dramatic, and visually striking as a result.