Erin Lee Gafill – The Sensational Still Life (Online)

Date: Saturdays, May 4-June 1, 2024
Time: 10:00 AM-12:00 PM Pacific Time (1:00-3:00 PM Eastern Time/6:00-8:00 PM London Time)
Level: All
Medium: Oil or acrylics (Erin will demo in oil)

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Still Life painting offers artists a direct observational experience to connect with objects and infuse their paintings with a personal style, aesthetic, and voice.  Arranging, lighting, and contemplating arrangements of objects in the still life not only provides us with a subject and methodology, but also a connection with the meaning our objects hold for us, and is a great way to reignite our creativity while spark new ideas and insights.

Join award-winning Big Sur Artist and writer Erin Lee Gafill for a lively exploration of still life painting like you’ve never painted before. This workshop promises to be fun, inspirational, and informative, starting at the beginning while giving you the confidence to tackle bigger and more complex subjects. Erin will demonstrate using oil paints, but the workshop is applicable for acrylics painters as well. Whether you are a seasoned professional artist, or you’ve never picked up a paintbrush, there will be something in this workshop for you. The workshop will cover composition, color, various drawing approaches, value, point of view, and lighting as well as attitude, intention, mind-set, and Erin’s top tips for eliminating painter’s block and perfectionism and just getting the work done.

Each session starts with a painting demo, with materials and specific techniques fleshed out, and then you will be invited to paint along with Erin in real time, with a feedback and Q/A session at the end.  In each session, time will be allotted to an inspirational slideshow of historic work which has inspired Erin over the years, an invitation to lean into the rich legacy of still-life painting from the past even as we reinvent it in our own personal and authentic style.

An award-winning painter and author, Erin Gafill has inspired people around the world with her inspirational art, heartfelt stories, and uniquely engaging teaching methods. Her work bridges art, craft, and community, weaving observation, intuition, and imagination into her painting, writing, teaching, and public speaking.

A fifth-generation California artist, she was born in Big Sur, California in 1963, the daughter of a beatnik and a flower child.  She is the great-great-granddaughter of Carmel’s first artist-in-residence. Growing up at her grandparents’ legendary restaurant, Nepenthe, a mecca for poets, bohemians and dreamers, she drew inspiration from its ever-changing cast of characters as well as the stunning and mystical beauty of the coast.

Erin is the founder of the nonprofit Big Sur Arts Initiative, and a founding member of the Monterey Bay Plein Air Painters Association (MBPAPA). In 2001 Erin was honored to serve as the first American Artist-in-Residence at the Hamada International Children’s Museum, Hamada, Japan.

In 2009, she and her husband Tom Birmingham were named Champions of the Arts by the Arts Council of Monterey County and were honored by the United States Congress for their service to the community through the arts.

Her exhibit Color Duets was the featured 2021 Spring/Summer show for the Monterey Museum of Art, Monterey, California, followed the next summer by a solo exhibit, California Atmosphere at the Morris Graves Museum of Art, Eureka, California. She is the author of a coffee-table art book, Color Duets, with Kaffe Fassett, and a memoir about life/work balance, Drinking from a Cold Spring, a Little Book of Hope. Both books are available at www.colorduets.com.