Linda Kemp was here last week getting her students to let loose their inner “mad scientist.” The medium was acrylics and the subject was negative painting techniques and strategies.
“Linda definitely exceeded my expectations! She was well organized, articulate, and made the workshop exciting & challenging!!” – B Wickham
This is one of Linda’s demo pieces. 
Richard McKinley was here last week for another phenominal workshop. The weather was gorgeous and the group magnificent! Studio time was spent discovering the excitement of underpinnings and value drawings. 
Richard had loads of information and guidance for all the students, as well as plenty of great stories that only a traveling art teacher can have! Here he was regaling the group with some rattlesnake stories from his workshops out west. 
The class spent a full day at Olana, down by the pond. 
Enjoying the delivered picnic lunch! 
Richard McKinley is one of our most popular instructors, so about half the class signed up for his 2018 class before they left this year’s class. If you want to get in on the fun in 2018, but sign up fast!
Every year at around Labor Day we hold the Artist Retreat, a self-directed retreat welcoming artists working in any media, paint, fiber, or anything else, to come enjoy working in the air conditioned studio, open 24 hours a day. This year we even had a bead mosaic artist stay for the week, but instead of working on her art, she spent the week working on a presentation for her “day job.” She said it was very liberating to be able to focus on her project and not have to worry about meals, or cleaning house, or anything else. She felt totally taken care of. Meanwhile in the studio, we had number of painters enjoying the focused creative time. 
This is a cold wax piece in the works by one of the artists who comes every year. He says this place is “his muse” and is always preparing for a show when he comes to the retreat. When he returns the next year, we get the report of all his paintings that have sold that he created at the retreat. 
Here we have the work of the first of the “dueling painters”. This woman would go out early in the morning and paint outdoors at some of the wonderful locations in the area. 
Then this painter would ask us for a photo of the same location from our extensive files and he would gleefully paint the same scene while remaining in the air conditioned studio with coffee, lunch, and cookie time just a short walk away. 
And speaking of food, everyone enjoyed the maple soy salmon on one of the nights. 
First we had Rayna Gillman here for a week with her “Freeform Design Spa” where everyone was slicing, dicing, and stitching to let the design magic happen. After that was a quick 3 day workshop with Esterita Austin teaching “Luminous Illusions” – an unique method of transferring a painted image onto organza to then layer together to create your composition. 
The squirrels are busy around the inn! They left this “art installation” – Exploded Pinecone – on the little bridge to the carriage house. 
Innovation and invention are in abundance in the workshop – is Esterita and one of her students showing how they turned a folding chair into an painting easel! 
