This is an intensive four day course that will be utilising ideas about painting from the imagination , and will be important to artists who have always wanted to explore the imaginary in painting but have felt unsure how to enter this difficult terrain. How can you create a parallel world in painting , one that expresses the unconscious , the dream , or the hidden parts of the self?
This course is now completed .
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During the four days , the participating artists will work up to making a finished painting or paintings , having worked through sketches , initial ideas, collages and other studies , into initial paintings and then finished , hopefully fully realised works that express an inner world.
Messenger by Dan Coombs Collage 
Windsurfers 2019 Oil on canvas
The course will be conducted on ZOOM , which has proved to be highly successful for tutors at The Essential School of Painting because it enables access to any image , film , oeuvre or work from art history that can be explored and discussed online. ZOOM also allows participants to share their work very easily and a large part of each day will be spent discussing and exploring each other’s work.
Drawing on many devices developed from surrealism and other twentieth century artists, Dan Coombs will show ways to break down the boundaries between the real and the imaginary in your work. Each day will begin with a presentation of an artists work either in the medium of painting and film , followed by a discussion amongst the participants , which will trigger ideas and strategies for the subsequent paintings. Dan Coombs will be available throughout the day for individual tutorials and the days work will be presented to the group for a group discussion at the end of each session.The aim will be to develop your work in new , exciting and experimental ways , learning devices and techniques that can then be taken back to the studio and developed to push your work in a newly imaginative direction.
The course builds on a highly successful Theesop evening class “Painting from the Imagination” but this course will allow the participants the time to fully realise their ideas and create a new body of work.
