Catskill Painting Workshop

Friday was show-and-tell day at the Hudson River landscape painting group in Hunter, New York yesterday.



People came out of the drizzly weather into a modernized red barn, set down their paint boxes, and covered the tables with their first week’s crop of pencil drawings, tone paper studies, and oil sketches of waterfalls, forest interiors and sunsets.

Above by Brendan Johnston. The goal of these studies, as originally envisioned by founder Jacob Collins of the Grand Central Academy, was to study natural form closely, in the manner of the pre-impressionist American landscape painters such as Asher B. Durand, Frederic Church, and William Trost Richards.

A line formed in the kitchen for hot dogs, veggie burgers, and salad. There were about 25 people from as far away as Canada, and Manchester, UK. They included participants in the month-long Hudson River Fellowship, along with students enrolled in a 10-day workshop taught by master landscapist Tom Kegler of Buffalo, New York. I was there as a guest lecturer to give a presentation on light and color in the landscape.


Peter Sakievich, a painting teacher from Utah, produced two sets of sunset studies in oil. He painted four consecutive studies of each of two sunsets from a nearby west-facing promontory. “I had to key the colors down,” he said, “because the risk is to get everything too light.” By the time he got to the last studies of the night, it was hard to see the colors on his palette.

Participants in this group are discouraged from using cameras to record details in the field. Many of them plan to use their studies for composing imaginative landscapes in the winter months.

LINKIFICATION
Previously on GJ: HR Fellowship
Hudson River Fellowship
Grand Central Academy Blog
Peter Sakievich website
Peter Sakievich’s blog describes his materials in more detail
Book on Frederic Church
Book on Asher B. Durand