Online Class
"Seek has been such a friendly safe place in which to take on challenges, develop skills and experiment. Tasks are referenced to interesting pieces of art, research and reflection a part of what we’re asked to do. Personal interpretation and opinions welcomed and valued."
- A cohesive themed set of six projects sent at the beginning of each term.
- Sent fortnightly on alternate Thursday evenings.
- £120, payment deadline seven days before the first one will be sent.
- Gift card available on request.
- Individual projects may be received for £22 each, payment deadline 4pm Wednesday, the day before the project is sent.
- Work to be submitted by email by Monday noon ten days after receipt, i.e. the week the zoom chat will happen.
- Individual feedback will be sent by email.
- All the collated work with a zoom invitation will be sent on Wednesdays.
- 8pm Thursday video conference on all the work
Student responses to the project
Sample project
TOWARDS THE ABSTRACT
A bit of art history to get you started this week.
In 1890 the French painter, decorative artist and writer, Maurice Denis said a very profound thing that resonates even today. “Remember that a picture, before being a battle horse, or a nude or some sort of anecdote, is essentially a plane surface covered with colours assembled in a certain order.” We all remember that wonderful Morecambe & Wise comedy sketch with the composer Andre Previn. Being accused of playing all the wrong notes by Previn, Eric reacts with “ I’m playing all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order.” Getting that semblance of the ‘right order’ that ‘works’ is a continual challenge for everyone including artists.
Look at the images I’ve included and see how the artists have distilled their compositions into simple arrangements of coloured shapes, still representing the subject but in semi-abstract form. The picture by Paul Serusier called ‘the Talisman’ is about A3 in size, painted on the back of a cigar box, under the instruction of Paul Gauguin. It was called ’The Talisman’ because of its special significance to the group of artists called ‘Les Nabis’ (Hebrew for prophet) and used it as inspiration for their collective approach to painting.
PRACTICAL PROJECT (Three Hours)
One picture up to A3.
Any materials, which includes a mix of materials including collage.
Choose your subject to work from. Look at its simple shapes and colours and carry that way of looking into the whole composition. See how all the example images are still able to represent objects but in that distilled way. The important thing is to try and not get bogged down in detail.