Capturing Light and Contemplating Nature: Using Watercolor and Gouache
August 4 - 9, 2024
Jered Sprecher · website
Workshop Overview
REGISTRATION FOR THIS WORKSHOP IS CURRENTLY FULL. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO JOIN A WAITLIST FOR THE CLASS YOU MAY DO SO BELOW.
Are you ready to paint? Join this immersive watercolor and gouache workshop exploring how observational painting and abstraction are vitally linked. In this workshop, students will build skills using transparent watercolor and opaque gouache paints together to describe nature and explore the potential of abstraction. There will be demonstrations focusing on the observational and expressive approaches to water-based media, as well as presentations looking at how artists use this versatile media. Students will create several paintings including outdoor studies, experiments in watercolor and gouache, and other sustained explorations in observation and abstraction. Open to all skill levels.
Techniques
- Basic color theory
- Use of watercolor to achieve a wide range of transparent applications
- Use of gouache to understand the opaque use of color
- Use of observational skills to build compelling realism and abstraction
Materials
- Watercolor
- Gouache
- Brushes
- Paper and other substrates
- Various painting and application tools
Outcomes
- An understanding of water-based media of transparent watercolor and opaque gouache
- A vocabulary for the tools and techniques used in watercolor and gouache painting
- A conceptual framework for making paintings that range from highly observed to images transformed
- through abstraction
- An understanding of the range of uses of water-based media and their history
- Completion of several watercolors and studies painted from observation of nature and the inventive use of abstraction
COURSE FEE: $690
Fees exclude housing and meal plans. Review housing options here.
Artist Bio
Jered Sprecher is an artist who makes paintings, drawings, and installations that abstract the landscape to explore the precarious relationship between nature and technology. His work wrestles with the beauty and complexity of the environment and how we as humans interact with the world around us both directly and mediated through technology. He received his BA from Concordia University and his MFA from The University of Iowa. Sprecher has exhibited at The Drawing Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Des Moines Art Center, Hunter Museum, Asheville Art Museum, and Espai d’art Contemporani de Castelló. He has had solo exhibitions at Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York; Gallery 16, San Francisco; Stephen Zevitas Gallery, Boston; Kinkead Contemporary, Los Angeles; Whitespace, Atlanta, and the Knoxville Museum of Art. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Bailey Opportunity Grant, and a Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship. Sprecher has been awarded residencies at the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation, the Chinati Foundation, The American Academy in Rome, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. He is a Professor in the School of Art at the University of Tennessee. He lives and works in Knoxville, Tennessee.
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