Ann Vance - Painting Workshop

A series of workshops introducing paint media, exploring the use of watercolour, gouache, acrylic and oil paint. The workshops are aimed at beginners or artists interested in expanding their practice towards experimentation and abstraction. The workshops aim to encourage freedom and play as opposed to rote learning but with enough sharing of technical knowledge to build confidence and self belief.

I shall encourage the use of self, feeling and experience towards developing an understanding of the media that is synchronous with the individual’s sensibilities rather than traditional forms. Paint media have subtle possibilities in aiding the expression of feelings and being able to recognise unconscious links in the act of painting is as useful to artists as technical/rational knowledge.

In the spirit of Joseph Beuys’ belief that everyone is an artist, the aim of each workshop is to tap into the creative well and allow the right brain to reign over its logical left side. There is much learning and a wealth of valuable experience to be gained from exercising the more visual right brain.

Participants will have the opportunity to explore visual elements of colour, tone, texture and form with each media and use various surfaces – paper, canvas, fabric, found materials; to use different tools and methods of application and gestural mark making; to expand painting method and use basic transfer and print techniques; to be introduced to exploration of colour – mixing and basic theory; to learn about artists who use paint expressively; to access inspirational resources; to experience group working; to produce a mixed media abstract work of their choice.

Ann Vance has worked with a range of media including film/video, installation art and painting throughout her career as an artist and is inspired by themes both personal and political. Theories of feminism and anarchism inform her ongoing praxis, combining creativity, thinking and action.

She has exhibited in Scotland and internationally and worked as co-ordinator/ curator for New Visions, Glasgow’s experimental film and video festival and on several artist initiated projects. She was recipient of a Scottish Arts Council Film and Video Award in 2006 and won the Marjorie Brown Prize in Social Work from the University of Edinburgh in 2014, where she completed research into radical social work. Her interest in Art Therapy informs her ongoing painting and collage practice.

She was awarded the Arnold Clark Prize at 131st Paisley Art Institute Annual Exhibition in 2020 and the Outspoken Arts and Society of Scottish Artists Prize at The Big Art Show, Paisley in 2022. She regularly exhibits her portrait work at the Scottish Portrait Awards and has been included in the RSA Annual online exhibitions in 2021 and 2022.

Host or Publisher Steven Thomson, Creative Producer