The Narrative Painting Year | Thursdays  8 October 2026 – 1 July 2027

Artist-Tutors: Melissa Kime and Dale Lewis
Day and Time: Thursdays, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm
Location: In Studio — Essential School of Painting, Wood Green, London N22 6TZ
Fee: £795 per term | Annual fee £2,175

About This Course

The Narrative Painting Year is a full-year studio programme built on a single, generative idea: that the people, places and everyday journeys of your own life are the richest material a painter has, and that observation is not the end of a painting but its beginning. Over three terms of ten weeks, students learn to work from what they see and then move beyond it — combining lived experience with imagination to make paintings that are both rooted and invented.

Storytelling sits at the centre of the year. Through myth and memory, poems and favourite novels, students develop images that travel freely between the observed and the imagined. Practical studio sessions are set alongside a sustained enquiry into how painters have carried narrative across centuries — from medieval drawing and the Sienese painters through to contemporary artists such as Kiki Smith — so that the work students make is informed by the long tradition it belongs to.

The course is taught in a small group by two practising artists, ensuring sustained individual attention across the year. Studio practice is combined with group critique, individual tutor input and shared discussion. The intent throughout is not illustration but transformation: the making of paintings in which a story, a memory or an ordinary encounter becomes compelling visual imagery.

Who This Course Is For

The Narrative Painting Year is for painters who:

• Want to work from their own life — the people, places and journeys that make up their daily experience — and turn that material into serious painting
• Are drawn to storytelling, memory and the imaginative image, and want the technical and conceptual means to realise it
• Have some painting experience and are ready to develop a coherent, personally motivated body of work across a full year
• Are curious about the long tradition of narrative in painting and want their own practice informed by it
• Find that the space between what is seen and what is imagined is where their most interesting work lies

There is no requirement to have attended art school. There is a requirement to be genuinely engaged with the idea that stories, memories and encounters can be made into paintings. If you are unsure whether this course is right for you, please use the contact form at the bottom of this page.

What the Year Involves

• Three terms of ten weeks — full studio days, 10am to 5pm, every Thursday
• Working from observation — people, places, everyday journeys — as the starting point for invention
• The development of narrative imagery drawn from storytelling, myth, poetry and literature
• A sustained study of narrative in painting, from medieval drawing and Sienese painting to contemporary practice
• Individual tutor input and group critique woven into every session
• A developing personal body of work built steadily across the year
• A group gallery visit to a major London exhibition
• A dedicated professional practice session
• An end-of-year group exhibition — your work seen publicly

The Observed and the Imagined

The year’s method is a movement between two poles. Students begin in observation — drawing and painting from life, from the places they pass through, from the people and objects around them — and then learn to release that observed material into imagination, so that a painting is no longer a record of what was seen but an image with its own internal life. Storytelling is the bridge. A poem, a myth, a remembered journey or a passage from a novel becomes the occasion for a painting that could not have been arrived at by observation alone.

Narrative in Painting: A Living Tradition

Painting has told stories for as long as it has existed, and the Narrative Painting Year sets students’ own work within that continuity. Across the year, tutors draw on a wide range of narrative painting — the directness of medieval drawing, the compressed storytelling of Sienese painting, and contemporary artists such as Kiki Smith who make the mythic and the personal inseparable. These are not lectures in art history but working references: ways of seeing what is possible, brought into the studio and put to use.

Gallery Visit and Independent Research

A structured group gallery visit is built into the year, chosen by the tutors to speak directly to the work the group is making. Students attend with a sketchbook and bring their responses back into the studio. Independent gallery visiting is actively encouraged throughout the year, with tutors providing curated lists of recommended exhibitions and readings at the start of each term.

Course Timetable 2026–27

Academic Year Dates at a Glance

Total teaching Thursdays: 30  |  Exhibition: Thursday 1 July 2027

About the Artist-Tutors

Melissa Kime

Melissa Kime holds an MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art (2015) and a postgraduate diploma from the Royal Drawing School. She has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, and won the Arts Club Award at the Royal Academy Summer Show 2019. She was selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries at the ICA London.

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Dale Lewis

Dale Lewis holds a BA in Fine Art from London Guildhall University (2002) and an MA in Fine Art from the University of Brighton (2006). His large-scale figurative paintings draw on his direct encounters with city life, rendering the everyday with a satirical and poignant eye. He has exhibited internationally, with showings at Saatchi Gallery, London; Edel Assanti, London; Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles; and Choi & Lager Gallery, Seoul, and held the Jerwood Painting Fellowship in 2016. His work is held in public collections including the Saatchi Gallery and the David Roberts Art Foundation, London.

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