Visual Arts Courses
Courses offered by our expert faculty in 2023:
Painting
Exploring Water Color
Session I: July 8-17, 2023
Instructor: David Daniels
Capture the essence of the beautiful Amalfi Cost in watercolor! Participants in this painting course will be encouraged to create plein air drawings, sketches and studies using the local scenery as inspiration, then return to the studio to further develop their reference material into completed paintings. This approach combines the immediacy of plein air drawing with the more deliberate studio approach.
Watercolor paintings can be so much more than a checklist of watercolor technique. David goes beyond the basics of paint application, and teaches how to construct strong, vibrant, personality- filled paintings. David shows how to carefully construct a watercolor using preliminary sketches and value studies. David will also demonstrate his method of using multiple glazes of wet-into-wet passages to achieve unsurpassed brilliance as well as the use of masking agents to achieve jewel-like clarity. Participants will work from their own personal photographs or sketches.
9-day stay
Cost: $3,245
Photography
Finding Your Vision: Photographing the Amalfi Coast
Session II: July 18-27, 2023
The Amalfi coast's breathtaking landscapes are renowned. We can find images of beautiful cliffs, lemon groves, and sparkling water. But how do you travel to such a location and take pictures that move beyond typical tourist images? In this course students will be encouraged to express their own unique vision of this artist's haven through their photography.
This course is open to beginning photographers as well as the more advanced photographer. Students will be photographing daily. There will be field trips, critiques and one-on-one meetings with the professor.
During the course we will discuss techniques regarding how to approach a new locale, overcome your hesitations, analyze your response to the new experience and photograph it depicting your point of view.
Students will be encouraged to think of the theme to tell a story with a group of pictures, not just in terms of the single frame. Discussions and critiques will also cover technical camera functions, composition and final presentations of images.
During the Festival, the Amalfi Coast area can provide a photographer with rich possibilities for still life, portrait, street photography, abstract images as well as landscape images. All genres will be welcomed. Students should bring a digital SLR (with completely manual capabilities), extra lenses (optional), memory cards, a laptop with image management software, an external hard drive for backup and a tripod (optional).
Daily critique of student work.
9-day stay
Cost: $3,245
Multimedia
Mapping the Amalfi Coast
by Brush and Paper
Session II: July 18-27, 2023
Instructor: Robert Devers
This hybrid workshop will feature hands-on experiences in ceramic glaze painting on tiles or plates and hand-made artists books, woven together by a love of the Italian ceramics tradition known as maiolica. The workshop is open to explorers, artists and students of art of any level, world travelers, and guests alike.
We will travel to numerous sublime and mythically beautiful sites to sketch, wander, explore, photograph, and gather inspiration from the landscape, the historic architecture, fabulous culture, and the rich craft traditions found uniquely integrated into the built environment along the Amalfi Coast.
The 3-day ceramic glaze painting component will include an overview of Italian majolica tiles of the area and be complemented by visits to an array of local ceramic galleries and studios.
The hand-made artists book component will provide the perfect substrates for mapping our Amalfi Coast experiences, culminating in an elaborate diamond fold accordion book, which will hold all of the various mapping elements gleaned from our travels in a visually richly layered mosaic of a document, mirroring the beautiful experiences we have created during our time on the Amalfi Coast.
9-day stay
Cost: $3,245
Mixed Media
The Artist's Sketchbook
Session II: July 18-25, 2023
Instructor: Rebecca Cross
The artist’s sketchbook is more than a visual record of experiences, a daily travel log or a starting off point for future projects – it is all of these. But ideally, it is the act of drawing itself that engages the artist’s full attention – intense observation of one’s surroundings, revealing a deeper understanding of the subject. The dramatic landscapes and rich culture of the Amalfi Coast have inspired the great Italian masters’ sketchbooks for centuries. Even Italian food tastes better after you have sketched your plate.
We will playfully experiment with techniques and drawing styles to suit our subjects and enliven our pages. Loose charcoal gestures will capture the performing musicians; colored pencils will delicately shade the still-lives of our favorite dishes, pen and ink crosshatching will describe the lines in the baroque architecture and watercolor will mimic the Mediterranean’s azure water and bright yellow lemon orchards.
Participants will be free to use their preferred medium or they can follow our suggested outline. We will sketch in and around the colorful streets of Positano, Capri, Ravello, Maiori and Amalfi, from our comfortable table at lunch to the dramatic cliff’s edge. Among these day trips to search for the most splendid views, will be a visit to a nearby artisanal agribusinesses aa well as a trip to the Museo Della Carta where we will learn about the history and production of the region’s famous handmade paper and purchase our next sketchbook.
7-day stay
Cost: $2,885