Stapleton Kearns 3-Day Workshop
Durham, NC
Nov. 1st - 3rd, 2013
$395
  
I am very happy to announce that Stapleton Kearns will be teaching a workshop here in Durham in November.  I've admired his work for a long time, and while I've learned much from his blog, I have also been looking forward to the chance to learn from him in person.

For many years Stapleton Kearns has traveled across the United States painting and teaching. He is a great admirer of American artists such as Edgar Payne, Aldro Hibbard, Willard Metcalf, Frederick Waugh, and Emile Gruppe.  His knowledge about the craft and art of painting is expressed in a direct and honest approach, and his informative and wildly popular blog is worth reading from the first post to the last.

Here is what he has to say about his workshop:

I love teaching workshops.  Everyone is always excited to be there and hang out with the other artists.  It is like a three-day party.  We go from breakfast until bedtime.  This is a total immersion program and I run the class about 12 hours a day.  In the evening, I do a lecture while we wait for dinner to be served.  

The schedule includes:

• A demo every morning, and on the first day I explain the palette and the various pigments.
• In the afternoon the students paint and I run from easel to easel doing individual instruction and trying to diagnose each student's particular barriers to better painting.
• After the demo each day I run a series of exercises teaching root skills like creating vibrating color and the parts of the light (that is, what you need to know to establish light in a painting).  I will also teach how to most effectively "hit" the color of nature outside.
• I do a presentation before dinner with images from my laptop. One is a history of White Mountain art so you can see what the greats of American painting did with landscapes similar to what we will be painting during the day.  The lecture on the next evening unpacks design ideas in the works of great landscape painters, particularly Edward Seago and Aldro Hibbard, two favorite painters of mine.

Bio

Stapleton Kearns considers his true artistic training to have begun in the mid-1970s with the late Boston School painter R. H. Ives Gammell.  It was during this time, while in Boston, that he took his easel outdoors up on Beacon Hill and began applying Ives Gammell's lessons to landscape painting.  The engrossing challenges of bringing the vastness of nature to canvas quickly captured his imagination.  Painting outdoors and communicating the visual poetic beauty of a particular place remains the focus of Stapleton's artistic expression to this day.  

His beautiful and prize-winning paintings are in hundreds of private collections both in this country and overseas.  During the 1990s, a single major American corporation collected several hundred of his paintings.  Stapleton has twice shown in the biannual show of the National Academy of Design in New York City.  The American Embassy in Moscow displayed one of his large snow scenes as an example of American painting in the Arts for the Embassies Program.  Kearns is a member of the exclusive Guild of Boston Artists and has served for five years as the president of the Rockport Art Association.  He takes pride in the fact that his collectors often hang his work alongside the work of some of the great artists of American art history.

I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to offer this workshop with Stapleton.  I hope you will choose to join me as a student of his in November.

Registration Policies

VERY IMPORTANT!!  Please send all your contact information (mailing address, all phone numbers, email address) in case there is an emergency and I need to get in touch with you.  arienne.cheek@gmail.com

A non-refundable deposit to hold your place in this workshop is $150.  The balance, $245, is due before midnight on Oct. 11th.  If the balance (or full payment) is not received by Oct. 11th, your space may be forfeited without notification. 

If you register on or after Oct. 12th, please pay the full amount for the class.  A $150 payment after Oct. 12th does not reserve for you a place in the class.

Once the class is full, I will begin a Waiting List.  Let me know if you would like to be added to the list, and I will put names on it in the order they were received. 

Facility, Supplies, Accommodations, etc.

Class will be conducted outside at a city park.  There is a shelter on site for us to use if necessary, and restrooms are available.  This workshop is open to artists of all levels of experience.  Also, while Stapleton works in oils, the art principles he teaches apply to all media, so it's fine if you want to use watercolor, acrylic, etc.  Here's the list of colors and materisls you will need to bring to the workshop.  Any accommodations you find beside or north of Duke University will be only 10 minutes or so from our class location.  Don't forget to consider air bnb as an option for comfortable, affordable housing.

I look forward to seeing you in November!