This class will introduce students to my ideas, techniques and phylosiphies about painting and the creative process. through a series of planned lessons each focused on an aspect of process and idea. We will begin each day with a lecture demo focused on a particular process. You will then work on individual lessons for the entire day. I will be critiquing and guiding students through out the day, remaining focused on one core idea per day. The last day and remaining time will be left for individual work and experimentation between the previous days lessons. There will be question and answer sessions as well as critiques throughout the days.

each day will include various painting demos on techniques, and engagements in the creative process. we will combine these lessons to create pieces rich in variation, and conflicting ideas, which will pose questions for us and help us find and follow our truest desires and beliefs within our work.

here are some example lessons to give you an idea

PRIMITIVE PAINTING - We will use our hands to mix and apply paint in a variety of free and improvisational techniques. creating color mixes on the fly from the palms of our hands. using layering techniques, and printing to allow us to move quickly and freely, learning to identify things we like rather than follow and coneptual plan. we find our images from fast expressed interactions. we build and navigate the works following color and blocking the marks that are not satisfying to we reach a point of organized organic movement

IMAGINING THE UNIMAGINABLE - I will give sets of cues triggering ideas about form and meaning. You will choose your interpretation of the cue on your own and execute it in your own way. The cues will force personal introspection as well as collisions and possibly contradictions within your piece. The rendering will be fast and simple, the focus will be on the narrative created by ideas that interact in nonlinear and associative ways.

EXPERIMENTAL PRINTING - Using mono prints, silkscreens, and photocopy transfers, we will experiment with layering and utilizing these techniques. Combining printing with other core ideas within my process to create finished works. I will teach you to use block and grab techniques to reshape and re associate the imagery in a variety of ways. Adding text, symbols, and line to to add meaning and redefine the base imagery.

EXPRESSIVE REFERENCE - Starting using reference imagery for our work we will maintain a loose and expressed application to capture the feelings we get from the reference rather than the details.

COLOR CHARTS AND MAPS - I will guide you to create color charts based on my concepts about color theory. Using hot cold light and dark to show how relationships between color are felt and processed as a viewer and how. Also focusing on the distribution of color within composition to move the eye throughout a piece. Through simple guided interactions each student will be working to find their own color map. Our goal is that these pieces will act as documentations to show individual sense of contrast and desired levels of color interaction within there work.

BREAKING FACES - Learning to create and deconstruct faces through a series of guided instructions. Faces will continually build, reshape, become vandalized, growing in levels of expression through out the process to reach a final state where it is a relic of all its growth

the techniques and underlying ideas focus on staying expressed within our process. not worrying about making mistakes rather learning to adapt fix and use our mistakes to create images that would otherwise not be possible. building a flow that teaches us to observe and follow freely based on our feelings about our work. teaching us to change directions to find new and unimaginable outcomes. a process built on experimentation and exploration.

supplies

- non toxic acrylic paints - bright red, block out white, pthalo blue, chrome yellow, mars black i recomend dickblick blickrylic
- oil pastels 1 each - red, white, blue, and any others you might like i recomend craypas
- as for surface you can bring large paper or gessoed canvas - 5 surfaces total. at least two surfaces should be paper 18x24-24x36inches either water color or bristol paper they need to stand up to paint. i recomend canvas for the other 3 sized aproximately 30x40in each. this way all of it can be rolled for the trip home.. canvas is easily purchased not far from the hacienda.

a mix of brushes
1 fan brush
1 2inch flat
1 1inch flare
1 4inch flate
1 round
any others you really like
1 pallette knife or something you can use to scrape through paint, something flat plastic or metal and aprox 2-4inches wide

materials -
Here is a link to the supply list to order things through Dick Blick where i purchase my own supplies.
http://jessereno.com/workshopmaterials.html

for visual examples of my work, bio, resume, and process please see my site -
www.jessereno.com

additional videos

to get a feel for my background and ideas check out a talk i gave at the
national art educators conference in chicago
http://media01.commpartners.com/ArtED/Annual_2016/Thurs03Reno/archive.html

extended process video
http://www.jessereno.com/vimeo.html

press
http://jessereno.com/press/

For information and reservations
contact Sam @