Level: Int-Adv

Saturday

Aug 10

10:00 am - 3:00 pm

Instructor: Susan Fehlinger

Fee: $130

In this one day workshop you’ll learn the joys and challenges of painting with the palette knife and explore the possibilities of using this tool to unlock your creative freedom.

You’ll learn to add texture and highlights and a little edge; to mix colors right on your canvas and enjoy the spontaneity and the accidents.

Watch instructive teaching demos, practice making marks with the knife and you’ll begin creating fresher, looser paintings. We’ll be covering a variety of subject matter to show how versatile this tool can be.

SUPPLY LIST

Please bring a photo of a place you love to use as inspiration for your painting.

Tools: One or two palette knives – Dick Blick has a starter set of 3 that are good sizes. Or you can get them individually. I use a 4” knife with rounded edges.

(Blick’s #96 or Jerry’s #49T) You may want a smaller one also, for detail.

Paint:  Oils or acrylics. Some suggested colors below. Feel free to bring your favorites.

Lemon Yellow
Cadmium Yellow
Indian Yellow or Yellow Ochre
Cadmium Orange
Cadmium Red
Quinacridone Rose or Alizarin Crimson
Cerulean or Manganese Blue
UltraMarine or Cobalt Blue
Prussian or Indigo Blue
Van Dyke Brown or Burnt Sienna
White–whichever one you like (Titanium, Flake, Zinc, etc.)

Medium:

For oils: Gamblin Solvent Free Gel (tube) or Solvent Free Fluid
For acrylics: Winsor & Newton Galleria Acrylic Gel Medium or Liquitex Gel Medium

Palette for mixing – Paper, wood, plastic, whatever you use in your studio.

Canvases: 16 x 20, or 20 x 20 plus an extra inexpensive canvas or two for practicing.

About the Instructor:

Susan Fehlinger had been yearning to paint throughout her 35 year career as a television producer, but never found the time. “I wanted to explore my right brain after years of favoring the left.” So in 2003 she moved to Cape Cod, bought a Bed and Breakfast and began painting.

As a a self-taught artist she discovered the palette knife and found that she could apply paint on a canvas quickly, thickly, and spontaneously. “I loved the textures I could produce with the knife and I loved no brushes to wash.”  She began painting the coastal landscapes and cottages  around her. She pushed the contrast of the Cape light, played with composition, scale, placement and negative/positive spaces. Hopper was her hero.

She soon joined the Chatham Art Gallery and was represented by Sheldon Fine Arts in Newport RI, and had solo shows at The Cultural Center of Cape Cod and The Cahoon Museum of American Art.

“I wanted to create a strong sense of place in my work, a familiar but somewhat abstracted place— that  calm place where we all want to be, and that we long for in these unsettling times —  and then to capture it when the light is just right.”

In 2014 she left Cape Cod and relocated to coastal Connecticut in order to be closer to her son in New York, and because she missed the energy and diversity the Cape lacks. Her work shifted to cityscapes and coastal architecture.

Now she’s painting full time and loving it. She has a beautiful studio at Metro Art Studios  in Bridgeport, a network of wonderful artist friends, and is an exhibiting member of several art organizations, Silvermine, Ridgefield Guild, Westport Artists Collective, as well as teaching painting with the palette knife at the Rowayton Art Center.

For more info or to contact, please visit www.susanfehlinger.com

For a treat, watch this video of Susan Fehlinger being interviewed by artist Miggs Burroughs for the Westport Library:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLZx9KIhYU0&list=PLRvmQu76JuJZV_7E9nhxS6-dOpC86Ulcc&index=6