Category: Blog

‘Life-Drawing with Rembrandt’: a 6 week class at the Queen of Hungary Project Space

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Quentin Crisp’s vocation was being a life-model, as he recounts in ‘The Naked Civil Servant’.

‘LIFE-DRAWING WITH REMBRANDT’

 

A 6-week life-drawing course using historical and contemporary drawing techniques with ‘The Art Practitioner’ alternative art school. Develop and expand your drawing skills by drawing through an exploration of the figure-drawing techniques of the giants of art history in a relaxed, friendly atmosphere, taught by professional artists.

 

Who: All welcome – students, beginners and professional artists.

 

When: Every Wednesday  6th October – 10th November, from 6 till 9pm

 

Where: The Queen of Hungary Project Space, Aylsham, Norfolk

 

Charges: £15 drop-in or £80 paying in advance for 6 classes

 

Details: The aim of the course is to stretch your drawing skills by looking at and talking about the work of six of art history’s most accomplished, innovative and skilled artists, from renaissance to contemporary: as well as Rembrandt you will be looking at Raphael, Egon Schiele, Paula Rego, Degas and Emma Talbot.

 

Each week we will begin with a slide show and introduction to the week’s artist, looking at how the different artists approach line, volume, space and mass, make light and shadow, composition etc.

 

With these ideas fresh in mind, you will draw the life model in a series of short poses, and after the break we will draw one long pose for 40 minutes.

 

Tutors: Chloe Mandy and Stephanie Douet

For information please visit http://www.chloemandyart.com/ and www.stephaniedouet.co.uk

 

Apply: admin@theartpractitioner.com

 

Contact: Stephanie on 07900330032

 

Website: www.theartpractitioner.com

 

Parking, lavatories and wheelchair access all available

 

 

 

 

TAp Home Curator #3 – Art in the bedroom

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TAp’s third Home Curator lives in a farmstead outside Norwich in an extravagantly colourful and fascinating house. Everywhere you look there are vases overflowing with flowers, rioting textiles, art and craft project in the making. Outside, peacocks and chickens pick their way around the lush garden.  Her choice was a large oil painting by Nessie Stonebridge, and here’s her questionnaire.

TAp Home Curator interview #3

 

Which of your paintings would you save from a fire?                        Mary Feddon

How many paintings do you own?          200

Abstract or figurative?       Figurative

Rothko or Picasso?             Rothko

Which one painting do you remember from your childhood?         A haystack by Monet

What was the first artwork you ever bought?  Alfred Cohen

Which one painting would you take to a desert island?         Rothko

If you could time travel, whose studio would you visit?        Lucian Freud

Did the painting you chose make you feel happy?        Yes, it engaged us    

How did you decide where to hang it?   It’s big and I wanted to see it properly so I hung it at the end of my bed

Did your feelings about it change over time?    I liked the energy of the work but found the subject menacing – a hunting scene!

Did the painting work with your collection?    Yes

           

Home Curator interview #2: Anna-Lise Horsley

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Anna-Lise in her studio in Cromer.

 

Our second Home Curator has downsized to a farmhouse, and in her collection large paintings jostle for space with smaller works.  She chose to borrow a painting by Anna-Lise Horseley, a wildly prolific and prolifically wild painter from Cromer.

TAP HOME CURATOR INTERVIEW

  • • How many paintings do you own? Somewhere between 30 and 40
    • Which of your paintings would you save from a fire? A large Mughal embroidered cloth we brought back from a trip in Inda
    • Abstract or figurative? Abstract
    • Rothko or Picasso? Picasso
    • Which one painting do you remember from your childhood?  Degas’ ballet pictures – the dancer, specially
    • What’s your favourite way to hang paintings – cluster, line, random? We’re in a rented house at the moment so – anywhere that fits!
    • What was the first artwork you ever bought? Papageno by Joanna Price
    • What’s the most you’ve paid for a painting? £800
    • Which one painting would you take to your desert island? A Holbein drawing
    • If you could time and space travel, whose studio would you visit? Holbein’s
    • Did the painting you chose make you happy? I was disturbed by the hair!
    • How did you decide where to hang it? There was a hook
    • Did your feelings about it change over the time period? I was intrigued by the hairy bit
    • Would you buy the work or another work by the same artist? Possibly
    Any comments? Part-payment might be interesting – and another time I’d prefer to choose which painting I have.

 

TAp’s Home Curator – putting art in the home

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print, paint
‘The White Vase’ in situ
Five surprise paintings hung in five Collections – so what did our Home Curators think about them?

Our first Home Curator worked as a film producer and director and now lives in the green bosom of the Norfolk countryside. She describes her home as ‘somewhere between bohemian and romantic-eccentric. Every window-sill, table-top, fire-surround is set-dressed according to whim and season.’   She approached the problem of hanging the heavy painting on thin ancient walls creatively, by posing the painting on a bookcase with a striking plant that complimented the colours of the art.

 

How had she enjoyed her experience of Home Curator? ‘It was really very exciting to be part of this project. And not just the arrival of new work into the home – there were many other unexpected benefits. It was searching the list that provided unexpected excitement; I thought I’d arrived at a place where my taste and judgement were pretty well established. And then came the list – selected by others.

 

‘It was the process of visiting and revisiting the work of artists unfamiliar to me that was the source of such satisfaction and excitement… as a result there are some artists’ studios that I want to visit as soon as it’s safe to do so.

 

‘One of the artists I did know was Elizabeth Merriman and buying one of her paintings was definitely on my ‘to do ‘ list. The mixed media piece that arrived was a still life of flowers in a vase, a traditional subject but the treatment was far from traditional.

 

‘I shall certainly be buying an Elizabeth Merriman in the future, and it would be wonderful if this scheme could continue as there are so many paintings and drawings I would love to see in situ. It was all very well organised and great fun. A little sad to say goodbye to something you have grown fond of, but an exciting opportunity for further visual adventures.’

 

    

 

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TAp News

 

art exhibition, art network, crit group, crit club, art in norfolk, norwich gallery

 

 

Welcome to all our subscribers to our Blog. We both can’t be bothered with Facebook and so we thought the easiest and nicest way to communicate with TAp subscribers is through a blog, so here we are. Since our launch in the icy winter of 2018, with twenty-three national and regional artists showing their work in the spectacular Shoe Factory in Norwich, we have come a very long way in the evolution of our Alternative Art School. 

We started The Art Practitioner with the idea of offering an art MA with only the good bits – all the talking, doing and learning with the (expensive) academic non-productive stuff filleted out. We’d planned live weekends of art study with micro-exhibitions, artist conversations, live drawing in stately homes. We’d established #CritClub, on-site sessions at the most exciting local galleries and the renowned public spaces in the region and close by with free and open debate about the works; we met in small drawing groups around Norwich and did the odd studio visit. We had planned for 2020 an exhibition program that included talks, a film club, mentoring and children’s workshops.

Then Covid hit. But instead of withering and bemoaning our lost plans, our garden grew; we began TApchat, weekly sessions that gave artists a voice. helping and supporting each other throughout the first lockdown. We had fun by creating the Big Bad Draw and taking part in the rather grim Big Draw, where many of you bravely submitted your worst work for re-modelling. We offered free online introductory mentoring sessions, even managing a few studio ones during the summer. This has continued and we are currently mentoring several artists, two of whom have had successful ACE ‘Develop Your Creative Practise’ applications,  and others who we are helping by recommending other mentors and planning a way forward with their practice. Moreover, we’ve placed one of the artists in the first of our partnership residence, in this instance with Gun Brewery based in Sussex.