Learn to use innovative painting exercises and unconventional tools to discover new possibilities for your landscape painting, plus: keep your creativity flowing back home with our innovative online tutorials.

Following your 4 days of study in st Ives, extend your learning for a further six weeks with fortnightly tutorials in our online studio. Reconnect with your fellow students and tutor using your computer or iPad with full technical support. This extended course ensures you stretch your techniques; experiment in your approach and bring that St Ives inspiration back home.

Map the contours of memory onto your observation of the St Ives landscape using expressive mark-making techniques to articulate your own unique painting voice . This affirming experience will add to your chronicles of landscape, one that gives you permission to describe it in your own unique way. Prior to the four-day course at St Ives School of Painting, you will receive a list of questions to think about from your tutor, contemporary landscape painter Kerry Harding. These deepen your recollection of landscapes past, present and future helping you position yourself within them. What do you do when you’re outside? Which landscapes do you draw comfort from? Which bring about a sense of awe, or unease? With images and sketches you collect, these prompts provide you with a powerful artistic resource during the course and after it, expanding the potential of your four days in St Ives. Kerry supports you throughout a process, helping you to listen more closely to what speaks to you, and how to process it through painting.

Consider the diverse contemporary landscape work of artists both Cornwall-based and international, such as Kurt Jackson, David Hockney, Maggie Matthews and Alasdair Lindsay. This exposure illustrates the bright possibilities of landscape work. Working en plein air around St Ives, you’re encouraged to intuitively draw what you are noticing, rather than what you think you should be. You will use acrylic, oil paint and a variety of mark making techniques and manipulations.

On your final day, Kerry will give you an individual project to work on. Based on your challenges and inspiration from the course so far, this will structure a way forward once you return home. Over the next six weeks meet with Kerry and the group three more times from the comfort of your own home in our virtual studio space. Upload your work in progress a few days before, along with any questions or comments. Kerry will then facilitate a peer discussion, ensuring an open and receptive space for your questions and ideas. This course is a superb way to build an independent practice, gain momentum and form fruitful habits that allow your creative expression to flourish.

Follow on course from home
The online tutorials will run in two small groups, we will ask you to email us your preference once you have booked your place.
Please allow at least 10 minutes before and after the session to enable you to be set up and logged in, on the online platform and to allow for any over running of the discussion.

Upload your work on the Friday before, along with any comments or questions. We will have a technician to help you with this, so you don’t need to be an expert using a computer. Kerry will facilitate a peer discussion to offer support and input for each person’s practice and feedback on possible ways forward.

Please note: this course requires a good internet connection and a computer or up-to-date tablet.

What will I learn?

– An appreciation of the diverse possibilities of expressive landscape painting.
– An understanding of the right questions to ask yourself when approaching expressive landscape painting
– A sharper understanding of what visual clues are emerging from your contemplation of landscape – past, present and future.
– The technical confidence to describe landscape in your own way.
– An chance to deepen your learning through extended contact with tutor and peers.

Who would this course suit?

This course would suit anyone interested in exploring their personal narrative through landscape painting but feel a standard short course isn’t long enough. You might be a more experienced painter looking to embolden your own style and voice or someone interested in exploring landscape painting at an early stage. There will be some time spent outside on the beach and headland, so you should be comfortable walking, carrying your materials and working standing or seated on the ground. However the course is mainly based inside the studio.

This course involves working in oils. We use low odour white spirit and keep the studio well ventilated. However if you have a sensitivity to solvents and oil based products the course might not be suitable.

What to Bring

Timings and Breaks