CLASSES AND WORKSHOPS 2025
I have over 15 years experience teaching creative workshops to all levels of ability, from nervous beginners to those looking to challenge and stretch themselves. 2024 will bring many opportunities to take a workshop with me as I continue to run classes at Bullclough Art School in the beautiful Peak District as well as workshops in Oxfordshire. Make sure you are on my mailing list to hear about them first!
Contemporary Landscape painting workshops
Venue: Bullclough Art School, Peak District
There are four contemporary landscape workshops a year at Bullclough- one for each season. The idea behind these workshops is that they provide you with the basic building blocks of landscape painting; line, mass and shape. I don’t want to teach you how to paint like me, though I will show you lots of the techniques I use in my work, I want you to begin to explore your motivation for painting- what is it you want to express? What colours and marks feel like home? How do you want people to feel when they look at your work?
If that all sounds very intangible then consider that you will also undertake lots of exercises that demonstrate the formal elements of painting like compositional formats, contrast and difference, line weight and colour mixing.
On day one we begin with some simple drawing exercises to get you exploring the ever-changing landscape around Bullclough art school. These sketches will serve as a jumping off point for several experiments with colour, tone and composition. We will explore together the idea of abstraction and expressive painting and, in particular, where you see yourself on that spectrum between detailed realism and contemporary expressionism. During the final day and a half of the workshop you will be able to work on a number of larger paintings informed by the things you have discovered about yourself and your own style.
All the materials you could possibly need will be provided for you including boards to work on and sketchbooks to record your time in this most magical of places. You will want for nothing. Drop me an email here if you have specific questions or you can use the links below for more information and to book. Nellie and Andy at Bullclough are always happy to help with logistics and to recommend place to stay, you can contact them here.
The Abstracted Landscape: Exploring expressive painting
Venue: Bullclough Art School, Peak District
2nd, 3rd and 4th May 2025
“Like a good poem, a good abstraction attacks your feeling before your understanding” Robert Genn
Spend three days with landscape painter Rachel Cronin as she guides you through a series of exercises designed to abstract the landscape and explore new compositions in your work.
Because abstract painting relies on design, colour, and composition as much as representational painting, we will spend time exploring how formal creative concepts can influence and help you as you create work. You may be a painter who wants to take their work to the next abstract level, or you may have attended more traditional painting workshops and are ready to untether your work from its subject matter. This structured course will help you to do just that.
Beginning on the first day with some simple landscape sketching, you undertake several exercises that will help you to explore different perspectives, unusual angles, and ways of rearranging the elements in a landscape to create a new work that evokes new responses.
Some of the exercises we will explore include:
Removing the landscape horizon line yet retaining a sense of the land
Using colour and tone to alter the sense of reality
Exploring paint application techniques such as glazing and scumbling to create contrasting textures and atmospheric effects
Using brush marks and drawn scribbles to evoke emotion and movement
Because this workshop is about exploration and process there will be less focus on completing a finished piece of work, but you will leave with plenty of sketches, inspiration and a couple of paintings on board. There will be an opportunity to work on large surfaces if the urge to work big takes hold!
The Abstracted landscapes: exploring shape and colour
Venue: Bullclough art school
5th, 6th and 7th September 2025
If you’ve wanted to create more abstract work and are interested in exploring new approaches to contemporary landscape painting, then this workshop is just for you.
Working with landscape artist Rachel Cronin you will spend two days receiving structured tuition on both the formal elements of making art like colour, tone, pattern and shape and the exciting ways we can break that the rules of landscape painting.
On day one we will begin with some simple landscape sketches and then spend the day editing, simplifying and reconfiguring elements to create several vibrant collages that simplify and abstract the landscape.
We will spend our first morning gathering information from the beautiful landscape surrounding Bullclough, experimenting with several expressive drawing techniques such as using our non-dominant hand, creating memory drawings and working with overlapped compositions. We will also explore how different shapes relate to each other and how different applications of paint evoke certain moods and effects. Because abstract painting is such a broad subject we will focus on abstract use of colour and simplification of form and composition in this workshop.
Some of the approaches we will explore on this workshop include:
Identifying and mixing saturated colours and desaturated neutrals
Exploring the shapes we can see in the landscape and adjusting their scale
Creating collages that explore the relationship between shapes, colours and abstracted forms
Exploring our own approaches to abstraction by working out where our work sits on the figurative to abstract continuum
Creating paintings based on our collages and working with layers of paint to give our work a sense of depth and history.
This workshop is ideal if you gather lots of sketchbook ideas but don’t quite know how to use them to inform your work. We will also work together to explore your own creative process and your ‘why’ so that you don’t feel lost when faced with a blank sheet of paper.
