Artist Workshops

My husband Jackie and I host workshops for artists. 

If you are an artist you understand about workshops. If you are not a painter, just think of it as education and continuing education for artists.

These workshops are for students, intermediate artists and professionals. Sometimes the students are professional artists studying with another artist that they admire. Sometimes even the professional artist instructors themselves study with the other professional artists that they admire! No artist ever stops learning and we all learn a lot from each other. 

I see lots of different styles of painting and work that I admire and their work styles range a lot. We recently invited and hosted a workshop with Anne Blair Brown. Her work is loose and she has beautiful sense of color relationships within her works. A lot of what I love about here work is the beautiful colorful "grays" she mixes. I also like the way she lays in the work on the canvas. She limits her brushstrokes and some of the exercises she had the students do was to "count" brushstrokes and to keep it under 40 strokes. What a challenge!

Anne talks with students at lunch break on the square in Pontotoc, MS

Anne's demo on the square.

Ann was so caring about her students needs. She is a good clear communicator and her demos also speak. She painted several demos at the student's request and had them painting some of the scenes in our little town that drew the mayor, editor of our newspaper and reporter, and the director of our chamber of commerce to our painting site in the middle of our little park area of our downtown square! One of the local opticians downtown also came out and even joined our group the last day of the workshop.

In June - a few days after the Plein Air Richmond, I will be teaching a workshop with the Delta Art Association. There are lots of great artists in the delta and I love to paint that area. Here are some of my paintings of the delta:

If you are interested in this workshop please contact Iris Mitchell at lilyiris@suddenlink.net for details. This is for the Delta Art Association in Greenville, MS and they may want to put you on a wait list until the members have a chance to register unless you are already a member. Not sure how that will work.

  In July we have artist Lori Putnam from Nashville here teaching her still life workshop. I like her work- especially her still life work and we are looking forward to hosting here here for the first time. This workshop is full for now- but do let me know if you want on the waiting list. There could be an opening last minute- you just never know! Here is a painting I did in Memphis when I took here workshop. It is very loose:

Sunflowers 20x 16 ©2011 Dot Courson, Oil

Here is one of Lori Putnam's works:

Painting ©Lori Putnam, Oil

New!
We have added another workshop this fall. Robert (Bob) Harper will be back again and we love Bob. He is one of the most energetic and funny and sharing instructors you will ever meet. Here is a painting of his behind country recording artist Amy Grant.

Amy Grant bought his painting - actually Vince Gill bought it for her --and she loved it so much that she put a larger copy of it on the stage for her DVD that won a Grammy. That is amazing to me to see Bob's beautiful painting that large. What a huge honor. That image had to help account for Grammy!

I have not started advertising spots for Bob's workshop yet but if you are reading this and want in to it please let us know. Dates are October 22-24- That is a Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday-3 full days and is $295. Contact us at artist@dotcourson.com to register.