Description
Workshop Overview
Embark on a transformative journey with the “Embodied Landscape” workshop, a process-driven exploration of mark-making and gestures as a creative practice. This immersive experience will delve into the profound connection between our physical environment, natural forces, and the expressive potential residing within each participant.
Inspiration from Connemara
The rugged beauty of Connemara will serve as our canvas, providing inspiration from the naked shores, dramatic skies, and the timeless ruggedness of the stones. Through this workshop, participants will engage with their immediate environment, translating its essence into a unique visual language.
About the Location
Imagine being surrounded by the Sléibhte Mhám Toirc, the rugged beauty of the Inagh Valley, where the light, clouds and mist fight for dominance and offers an amazing palette in full display.In the Spring, the mountains would change from grey to dazzling white and then glow golden orange with the descending sun. As storm passes, the sky, which was once black tuns blue, the hills from orange, brown, red and green. The countryside sparkle and everything contribute: The sky, the hills, lakes and rivers, stone walls and paddocks.This barren landscape has captivated the hearts and soul of poets, painters, artists and writers for a very long time. I can certainly count myself among them. Connemara took my heart many years ago and I have finally made my home close to it and it has become one of my chosen inspiration for my own work.
Daily Sketching and Drawing Practice
Isabelle Gaborit will lead participants in a daily sketching and drawing practice. This process serves as a foundation, informing encaustic paintings by exploring mark-making and gestures. The goal is to cultivate an embodied experience of the surroundings, capturing a visual memory of place—its forms, colours, textures, and patterns.
Transmutation into Encaustic Paintings
Back in the studio, emotional responses will be transmuted into encaustic paintings. This intuitive process relies on trust, allowing each mark and gesture to be stored in the artist’s hand and body, becoming tangible within the cooling wax. Participants will witness the alchemical transformation of their observations into unique works of art.
Techniques and Geological Inspiration
Isabelle will demonstrate various encaustic painting techniques, drawing parallels between geological activity and artistic expression. Emphasizing the physicality of natural processes such as erosion, deposition, weathering, and relief, participants will engage in building up, scraping back, heating, cooling, scoring, shaping, and layering. Mimicking geological processes aims to reveal stories and records embedded in highly tactile surfaces.
Skill Levels and Techniques
Participants of all skill levels—absolute beginners and developing artists alike—will be exposed to basic, intermediate, and advanced techniques in working with encaustic medium. Isabelle will guide everyone toward creative growth, offering a comprehensive learning experience.
Outcome
Engage with the ruggedness of Connemara , generate new visions, and acquire the skills needed for creative growth when the landscape becomes the teacher, and your creations become a testament to the profound dialogue between artist and environment.
Subjects covered during the two days:
Resources on Safety, ventilation, correct working temperatures, equipment
Appropriate supports and grounds, palette, brushes, colours, and studio set up.
Daily sketching and mark-making diaries
Different ways to apply paint, fusing options
How to achieve a smooth/textured surface.
How to achieve translucency/opacity
Mark making: Inscribing/etching/sgraffito/scraping technique
Relief and textural techniques (Cavo rilieveo, dripping, splattering, accretions…)
Participants will also have the opportunity to work large ( 40 x 40 cm) and use larger brushes
Prerequisite:
Bring notebooks & sketches and drawing & sketching materials, tablets, or laptops for drawings and a camera if you need to take images.
Details
Dates: Saturday 15th, 10 to 4pm /Sunday 16th June 2023, 10 to 4 pm.
Location: Interface, Recess, Co Galway, Ireland.
Fee: €250. The package price includes 2 days of total encaustic painting immersion, encaustic materials, such as a large selection of R&F paint and pigment sticks, as well as equipment . Also, a pdf printout containing all the information you need as well as a list of suppliers. ( participants are asked to bring their own materials for sketching and sketchbooks. A suggested list will be provided upon booking)
Workshop limited to 10 participants.
Art Classes for everyone: absolute beginners and developing artists alike.
Payment plan available.( deposit of €100 required to secure space). Please contact me here for details about payment plan.
Accommodation is not included in the fee.
Please check Air B&B website or booking.com for available accommodation in proximity. The workshops will take place in Recess, by Lough Inagh, Co. Galway.
Important note: Due to the high demand for my workshops this year, all places on all workshops are limited and sold on a first-booked, first-served basis, which means that you will need to secure your space as early as possible to avoid disappointment.
You have questions about my workshops? read my FAQ sheet here
Enquiries:
You can email me here
Once you register I will provide you with information on travel as well as directions to my studio and how to prepare for the week end .
Read testimonials from former participants here
Find me on social media:
