Lucie Winterson Teaching

The courses employ the most fluid of mediums, watercolour,

as a means to explore ideas and connect to nature.

I think of watercolour in the broadest sense, as a painting material which is very simple in origin, yet can expand and extrapolate into a vast array of images and outcomes. Watercolour is about the fluidity of water and the dynamic of how it moves through materials. It has a special capacity for luminosity as the paper is the source of light.

Watercolour is sometimes seen as a genre, with its own specific history and materials. For instance the particular kinds of paper, brushes and paints that have been developed by the likes of Winsor and Newton. Although we use materials like these and appreciate the science that has gone into their development, the emphasis in the courses is far more to do with the wider reach of water based materials in general and how we can use them creatively to connect with ideas.

In my own practice I am not a ‘watercolour’ artist and don’t believe assignations based on material alone. However, watercolour, specifically the concern with water flow, is part of what I do. As a teaching modality, I deeply appreciate the simplicity of the medium, and the way in which this most basic kind of paint (pigment with a natural gum binder and water) can explore a virtually limitless arena of ideas. It is a glorious vehicle through which to explore ideas, visual language and our connection to nature.

Engaging with watercolour as with the natural world.

The courses are nearly exclusively bound to ideas around nature and our relationship to it. This is explored using nature as a subject but also looking at the materials themselves as a form of nature, in the organic way they move, flow, sediment, capillary out, billow etc and acknowledging our own ‘nature’ when we experience corresponding sensations in our selves when we witness it.

This extends into how we relate to the natural world, how we look at, conceive of and respond to its sentience and agency which brings into focus the inevitable remembering of our context as people living in an ecological crisis. There is a concept these days of ‘plant blindness’ - the manner in which humans don’t even register plants - and by extension the wider natural world. There are ways in which, perhaps, through using drawing and watercolour as modes of encountering nature we can be pulled into a new kind of connection, or indeed a remembered connection which in these ways can be reinforced and flourish.

Looking at artists, their approaches and techniques

The artists we look at are not those who work exclusively in watercolour, but individuals who may have achieved extraordinary things in a range of media, including watercolour. Often we look at artists who do not use watercolour at all if that helps trigger ideas in a useful direction. Here is a list of some of the artists we look at who use water based media in interesting ways as part of their practice. Sculptors, for instance, often use watercolour as part of their drawing practice and because of their focus on the materiality of materials - use it in a more inventive manner, less tied to perceived traditions.

Here are some of the artists we look at, all of whom offer something unique and extraordinary in how they have used this water based medium.

Auguste Rodin

Louise Bourgeois

Jo lewis

Joseph Beuys

Barbara Nicholls

J M W Turner

Anselm Kieffer

Emil Nolde

Marlene Dumas

Utagawa Hiroshige

Anthony Gormley

Henry Moore

Minjung Kim

Vincent Van Gogh

Bernd Koberling

Francesco Clemente

Raoul Dufy

Gerhard Richter

Paul Klee

William Tillyer

Roni Horn

John Cage