Visual Arts Workshop

Plein Air Landscape Painting Workshop
with Jef Gunn
September 9-12 |  9:30am-5:30pm
Tuition $450 |Materials $20
Manzanita, Oregon
This class requires proof of vaccination

 

The Hoffman Center for the Arts in Manzanita
will offer Plein Air Landscape Painting
a 4-day painting workshop

This will be a beginning painting workshop focused on painting the coastal landscape from direct observation, our own experience in the open air. Nothing is quite as exhilarating as meeting our experience with our eyes and hands in paint on a small rectangle. It is also quite complex, so some guidance is a good idea. We will learn about the materials and gear (paints, brushes, palette, and the plein air easel). Also, importantly: composition, color, paint mixing and handling, palette management, and the stages of building up a painting.

With this workshop you will have a firm foundation in the essentials of painting, and of painting the landscape en plein air. Plein air is simply French for “outdoors,” literally “full air” or “in the open air.” It has recently been taken to be a style. I don’t see it as a style. I don’t actually care about styles. I do care about authenticity. Each painter paints as they see and feel. The more comfortable they become with the materials and their process, the more freely their feeling and vision can show up in their paintings. And that’s magic.

Jef Gunn was born in Seattle in 1955 and grew up along the West Coast from Puget Sound to southern California to Hawaii. He studied drawing and painting in California through the 1970s, held residencies in Barcelona and Paris in the 1980s, and since the mid 1990s has engaged in a passionate study of Asian art. In 2005, Gunn completed a BFA in painting from Marylhurst University. He lives and works in Portland, Oregon, where he teaches painting workshops at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, and through First Light Studio, his own Portland-based studio.

With a balance of humor, broad knowledge, and helpful insight, he is able to draw from each student her or his own natural way to paint, while bringing to bear practical instruction through historical examples, especially of the Modern period. A complete materials list will be sent to students when they register. 

Please click here for more information on Jef and his artwork