This course will invite students to approach painting from photographs. Students will work from images that speak to them from their own photographs and from found photography. In this 5-week course, students will create exploratory paintings on paper to prepare for a work on canvas. We will work with various approaches to painting and challenge our predispositions to delve deeper into what makes us excited about our practice. 


Through conversation and critique, we will explore when to focus in on the representational and when to treat the work more expressively. The goal is for each student to come closer to finding their own way of expression through colour, brushwork and composition and to develop their personal practice rather than learning to paint in a particular style. Technical instruction on colour mixing and brushwork will be provided as well as tips and tricks for building a painting formally.


Please Note: The County Arts Lab has moved upstairs! Classes are now taking place in unit 2E of the Picton Armoury (Main Street level). The most convenient access is through the Main Street entrance, but you can also enter through the back/Mary St. entrance and use the interior stairs to reach the main floor (please note there is no elevator in the Armoury). There is one accessible parking spot at the corner of Main and Ross streets across from The Regent Theatre.

Meet Julie! For the first 25 years of her painting career, Julie's focus was on the figure and the face. One photograph changed that, and since then, she has been working with images of store windows for the last decade. Thrilling to the effect of photographing reflections and painting with alternating abstraction and representation. Aspects of the interior and exterior, the natural and the manufactured merge, and are treated with alternating description and abstraction. Color, beauty and familiarity call up a kind of peaceful wonder at being in the moment when the photograph was taken. Capturing that pause to comment on this era of human experience, and to share the sense of wonder she feels in the visual world.

Art supply fee - Please note that the cost of supplies is not included in the course fee; this amount depends on the course, and will be automatically added to your total. If this cost is prohibitive for you, please contact our Programs Manager, Stacey at [email protected] before registering to make alternative arrangements.

Offline registration - We prefer to take payment and registration through this form, but if you are not comfortable with this option and it is more than 2 weeks before the course begins, please check the "Offline" box in the Billing Information section below. We will contact you with alternative payment options. Payment must be received at least one week before the course begins.  

Processing fee - This covers transaction and ticketing fees. We've decided to use Regfox, the most affordable ticketing platform we could find, which will collectively save our participants over $1000 in processing fees per year.

Policies and Waivers - We've included these as part of the registration process (thank you for your patience!) to save some paperwork on your end and get straight to creating when we are in person!

  • We encourage those who are able to pay a little more to choose this price ($20/hr). By doing so, you are helping build a community that prioritizes access to the arts for all, and allowing us to cover more of our operating costs, which include Artist Instructor fees, rent, and more.

  • This price ($15/hr) allows us to cover most of the costs of running the course.

  • This price ($10/hr) is available to those who find the other two options too high for their household.

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY: County Arts makes every effort to ensure that all community members, including those who (or have family members who) are more medically vulnerable feel that they can safely teach and learn at the County Arts Lab. We also want to ensure that those who are unable to wear masks have access to our programming. 

We recently moved to masking on a class by class basis. Please select the option below that best describes your comfort level with regard to masking. (Please note, if anyone in the class selects the third option, we will ask that everyone who is able to do so wear a mask.) If you have any questions, please reach out to Programs Manager Stacey Sproule at [email protected].

$25.00
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$28.25
$28.25
Your current total for 1 registrant is $30.85 (Show Summary)

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Banner image by Julie Seddon

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