Six Approaches to Abstracting the Figure Workshop

Taught by Artist Melinda Cootsona  |  www.melindacootsona.com

Courtesy of Melinda Cootsona

Friday-Sunday, February 16-18, 2018  |  10am-3pm  | Skill Level: Intermediate

Class Fee: $550

All class fees are non-refundable and non-transferrable

This three-day workshop will look at six different approaches to abstracting figurative work. This will include Abstraction Within the Form, Flattening, Pattern and Collage, Exaggeration • Distortion, Cropping, Fractured • Deconstructed. 

Slide presentations of some art history as well as inspiring images of artists who currently work with these methods will be presented. Student will then focus on two or three of the approaches for the three-day course.

The goal is for every student to discover new and exciting ways to create abstracted imagery that can become integrated and personal in their own work.

Students should have some experience with drawing the figure. You do not need to be an expert by any means, but you will get more out of this class if you have worked with the figure before attending. Students should have a working knowledge of their medium. Oil or acrylic paint are acceptable.  (Melinda personally works with oil paint.) The minimum age for participation in this workshop is 20, younger participants will be accepted with approval from the artist.

All class fees are non-refundable and non-transferrable

About the Instructor
Melinda Cootsona is a figurative painter in Northern California. Greatly influenced by the Bay Area artistic tradition, her paintings focus on the strength of the female figure. Her paintings are created with layers of oil paint, applied and then scraped away revealing figures that fill the canvas in varying poses of contemplation or reflection in abstracted surroundings.  

Melinda has been included in exhibitions at the Bakersfield Museum of Art and the Triton Museum in California, The San Francisco Art Market, The Coos Bay Museum of Art in Oregon, and Art Basel Miami, as well as many group and solo shows throughout the U.S.