Breakthroughs in Creative Imagery: Collage and Painting

In this workshop, participants will explore painting and collage as tools for realizing images that free the imagination.  Emphasis is in removing creative blocks and giving life to expressive images that are personal and meaningful.  This class will be a liberator of the creative imagination, whether you are a beginning artist who has not yet found your personal “vision”, or an advanced artist who needs to develop a more experimental approach.
By using paint in combination with collage, the artist is able to go back and forth among the two, adding controlled and spontaneous elements as the image unfolds. You will explore new methods that will challenge your natural way of working.  Each student will be guided to discover what process works best in finding and expanding their own creative voice.  Open to the figurative and non-figurative artists, participants will look at the relationship between personal iconography and compositional structure.

Technical concerns covered in this class include: collage construction; transfers and gluing techniques, setting up a color palette, paint mixing, layering, and textural applications.

Bring some collage materials to your first day of class. This will be an exploration exercise, so don't worry about having the "right" materials for the perfect collage. Ideas can be found in the supply list that follows. Bring enough to have something to share with other students as well.

Supplies will be discussed at the first meeting, but following are some suggestions for materials to be used in the 2nd-6th classes:

• Collage materials (including but not limited to photographs, magazines, photocopies, organic materials, cloth, artifacts, old drawings and paintings, maps, handwritten letters, etc)
• Oil and/or Acrylic paints, in a variety of colors (colors, thinners, and mediums will be discussed at the first class)
• Supports for collages and painting: (ex: paper, plywood, canvas, plexiglass)
• Polymer medium for adhesion of collage materials (ex: Golden matte acrylic medium)
• Brushes, painting knives, squeegees, rollers, plastic wrap, rags, paper towels, jars

About the Instructor

Robin Urton has been painting for over 20 years.  She has a BFA from University of Texas at San Antonio, and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art.  Despite this, she considers herself to be largely self-taught, and feels that the impulse to create can often be thwarted by the overly-critical and theory-based stance of many art schools.  She has several years experience teaching college and community-based classes for both children and adults, preferring to focus on adults who are “recovering their inner child”.

Robin’s own artworks utilize painting on layers of plexiglass to create dimensional and often surreal dreamscapes. You can see samples of Robin’s artworks at http://www.eyeconart.net