Who is this workshop for?

Proportion, value, and color are technical fields that every painter must master, but what Steven Assael is most interested in is developing the abilities of the thinking eye. «To see is to know, and to know is to see» —he states.

 

 

This workshop is for those who wish to paint in a way that looks right for the eye, not according to regulation. Steven Assael will teach you to be aware of the dance between balances, of the relationship between the symmetric and the asymmetric, and the relationship between the elementary principles.

You will soon realize that everything you know about color and how to manipulate the oil painting is strongly limited by prejudices and ways of observing that come from pedagogical methods, not from your own visual grammar.

 

 

This workshop is for painters who do not see color as secondary in the development of the form. Not surprisingly, Steven Assael states that «color is form, and form is color» since color informs about meaning, emotion, and narrative in a composition.

What is the most immediate thing you see? How to merge the subjective and the objective? How to abandon the idea of what a painting “should be”? Start preparing your questions, because this workshop promises many answers.

What will you learn?

You will learn to take risks allowing uncertainty and tolerating error. Steven Assael states that, if you can change the way you approach painting and recognize your limits, that is the first step towards self-knowledge as an artist.

 

 

For many years Steven Assael has developed a very personal approach in the application of oil painting and will share its keys with you. Placing the palette on the very painting will allow you to be more aware of the act of painting, making it an immersive and sentient flow, something between the conscious organization and the unconscious response.

You will learn not to suffer the limitations of segregating the notions of value and color, thanks to the solidity of an approach that does not relegate color to a mere layer of extra information.
You will discover that there are other ways of observing and painting, and you will learn to see the form as a container of emotions.

 

 

Our brain does not work as a camera, and that creates a lot of friction between experimentation and the expectation of an outcome. So you will also learn to cultivate the sense of opportunity when you paint from life, knowing how to observe what the living model offers you beyond the simple depiction of an image.