Portland, OR March 2025 Art and Soul Workshops

Workshop Details

Jesse Reno
9:00 - 4:30
Mon/Tue/Wed March 17-19

Freedom to Create - 3 Day Class


$ 500  

 

This is an open level class as there is plenty to be learned by someone who has never painted before or those who are full time artists and teachers. A mix of demonstration, lecture and hands on painting will introduce students to my ideas, techniques and the concepts that motivate my work.

In this mixed-media painting class you will learn to create paintings that emerge from an abstract base of markings, colors, line, and shape to form expressive and organic creations. Students will learn painting and mark making techniques that will encourage imagery and connection to their work. Through a series of painting exercises, you will explore and express your ideas by imagining what could be created from abstraction rather than confining your ideas to predetermined outcomes. Within the process we will create narrative dialogue by noting what we see and feel in our work . Through the practice of subtractive painting we will remove the parts that are no longer relevant or keep us trapped from progress. This teaches us choice and freedom to change direction in our work. We continually build layers within our paintings combining fragments of passed ideas with the new until we arrive at a feeling of completion . Through this engagement we learn to experiment, take risks, re associate our work from perspectives unconfined by our expectations. This allows us to see things clearly and move to a more expressed and personal engagement when painting. Using simple materials and techniques you will be free to express yourself within your paintings in new ways. finding yourself as a painter from the raw base of art, learning your personal likes dislikes. Connecting you to your practice and imagery from a position of experimentation and instinct. Teaching you to imagine the unimaginable.

For me painting is an experience in every way, i love the feeling of each
of my mediums and methods, drawing clenched fisted, wrong handed, without
looking, using my hand and palms to smear and mix acrylic paints, using
brushes, scrapers, oil crayons, and pastels in any way that comes to mind.
I'm always looking for a new technique to inspire me.. painting in many
reckless layers searching for a meaning in random intentions, then pulling
out the images i begin to see. This is what I will aim to instill in all
of you.. the excitement of the unexpected.. creating in ways that don't
seem logical. This is a key step towards understanding intuition

If you would like to learn more about my teaching style and my background you can check out the videos below

Here is a link to a recent feature on my teaching ideas and techniques from Oregon Artbeat
https://www.opb.org/video/iframe/ora-1909-01-jesse-reno/

Here is a link to a lecture i gave at the national art educators associations annual confrence in chicago a few years ago
http://media01.commpartners.com/ArtED/Annual_2016/Thurs03Reno/archive.html

To see over 2000 examples of my work and to find out more about me check out my site - www.jessereno.com
 

Materials fee $25 paid directly to instructor at beginning of class includes:

non toxic acrylic paint primary colors, white and black. black colored pencils as marking tools, and heavy wieght 100lb bristol paper as our surface, so we can roll our pieces up for easy transport home.

Supplies You Need to Bring to Class in addition to materials provided by instructor:

- small brush for details
- 1 inch flat brush
- 1 2 inch chip brushe
- fan brush
- additional brushes are fine, the sizes dont need to be exact, old or worn brushes are also fine. Basically you want a few brushes to experiment with of different sizes and styles.


Oil pastels – I use craypas they are very affordable and have a nice level of oil not to oily not to dry, but any oil pastels will work.
- 1 blue pastel
- 1 white pastel
- 1 red pastel
- 1 yellow pastel