Artist-tutors: Melissa Kime and Dan Coombs
Annual Fee: £2175, Term Fee: £795 (per term for 3 terms)
Course description
The Painting Year II on Wednesdays is a practical course for those looking to advance their practice, develop their skills and content whilst being guided by experienced and celebrated painters. The intention of the course is to inject your practice with inspiration, enable you to try new approaches and materials.
Join a vibrant community of artists and engage in a dynamic conversation about contemporary painting. This course offers a structured yet exploratory environment where you’ll deepen your practice, refine your techniques, and develop your ideas.
Every two weeks during term time, visiting artists share insights into their work and studio practice, enriching your understanding of different approaches and perspectives. Alongside these talks, you’ll have the opportunity to ground new methods in your own experience, building confidence in both technique and concept.
Designed for those with prior painting experience—whether self-taught or formally trained—this course acknowledges that many artists, even those who attended art school, were not given the technical or intellectual support needed to fully engage with painting. If you’ve felt drawn to painting but lacked the right guidance, this course provides the structure and expertise to help you grow.
You’ll receive carefully curated looking, watching, and reading lists to inspire and challenge you. If you have any questions or would like to speak with a member of our team, please fill in the form at the bottom of the page—we’d be happy to hear from you.
Course timetable 2025-26
| Term | Dates |
|---|---|
| Oct Term 2025 | 1 October to 10 December Half term 5 November |
| January Term 2026 | 14 January to 25 March Half Term 18 February |
| April Term 2026 | 22 April to 1 July Half Term 27 May |
| Exhibition Dates | TBA |
About the artist-tutors
Melissa Kime
Melissa was born in Wiltshire UK in 1989 and currently lives and works in London. She graduated with a BA Fine Art in 2011 from Falmouth University, with a postgraduate diploma in drawing from the Royal Drawing School in 2013 and with an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art in 2015. She exhibited in Bloomberg New contemporaries, 2014 at the ICA London which was selected by Enrico David, Goshka Macuga and Marvin Gaye Chetwynd and won the Arts Club award at The Royal Academy Summer Show, 2019. She has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad in both solo and group shows, she has won numerous prizes for both drawing and painting and her work is in many private collections. Read more >>>
Dan Coombs
Dan is the lead tutor on the ESOP Advanced Painting Course. A graduate of The Ruskin School, Oxford (1989-92) and the RCA (1992-94), he was Rome Scholar in painting to the British school in Rome (1994-5) and has then exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. Dan creates his compositions from studies in collage and paint, which unite his figures with entirely invented surroundings, landscape dream worlds and interior spaces. These are human encounters charged with a mysterious, symbolic power. They are explorations of guilt, beauty and fear of isolation; that draw on myth, religion and psychoanalysis in order to grasp the real within the imaginary. Read more >>>
Image copyright of The Essential School of Painting. All rights reserved.
