This is a 6 week course, running on Monday mornings.

Creative Approaches to Genre Painting

The painting of everyday life can be invigorated with a consideration of holistic place studies, using art photography, collage, gestural drawing, and the creation of paper shapes prior to painting. If the artist is able to organize, emphasize visual information, and aim to create an archive for the future, then genre painting can move forward from its sunken status. There is something potentially more poetic in painting than the everyday photographic records we normally see of home life. This course aims to unleash fresh approaches to uncover those surprises that are ‘clearly invisible’, yet a crucial part of place.

Sue has completed Degree Visual Art and Applied Design, Diploma Photo Imaging, Degree Visual Art (Honours 1st Class) and PhD Visual Art. Her research utilized geographic thought for genre painters…a transdisciplinary approach. She has regularly exhibited since 1998 and has a particular interest in art’s place studies for wellbeing.

MATERIALS TO BRING: Journal, scissors, glue stick, camera/phone, acrylic paints, gouache or watercolours.

COURSE OUTLINE:WEEKLY SCHEDULE:

Week 1, July 13th 2026; Exploring all the Push and Pull of Place Studies.

Artistic efforts have long been associated with and, indeed, deemed necessary to accompany geographers’ work, by bringing ideas on to the page. Consider that we will refresh ways to archive our personally favoured surroundings, in the spirit of the artists of the past who accompanied explorers. Place studies have been the central focus of humanistic geography and we will begin to explore how some of their lesser-known, and holistic, philosophies can assist our artwork. In the first approach, Interactions will be observed through historical paintings, and, later, sketches will be made of how we interact with nature in our gardens. We will utilize only memory in this first sketch book exercise.

Week 2 July 20th, 2026; Shaping the People in Place

Identity is formed when we have repeated or defining influences upon us; one becomes who they are through repeating a skill, action, or situation. We will side-step the usual social -political considerations to look at how the physical environment shapes us. What untold skills, actions, and particular situations can we paint? Science is now proving that genes are switched on, others are left off, due to our long-term locations. Desert heat, cold steep valleys without sunbeams, locations where the wind blows tirelessly, we shall consider these shaping forces to paint. Surprising colour combinations will be used to provide emphasis in our sketches.

Week 3 July 27th, 2026; . Vernacular Architecture

People can begin a process in altering their local geography, so a new atmosphere is formed. Self-designed housing adaptions could be considered in this expansive way of living. It is thoughtful citizens and decision makers who contribute to the ambiance of places. If you were given a whole roll of shade cloth, or twenty sheets of gyprock, or 700 flower seeds, what could you do? We will be looking for our local adaptive examples and arrange architectural collages to play with. These will be useful fictions, of the place but never to be found.

Week 4 August 3rd, 2026; Striving for the New Atmosphere

Sometimes, the environment intensifies, and we have to concentrate on creating a new atmosphere in our daily lives. How can we depict ‘clearly invisible’ forces in our places? Evaporation, grime, underlying sadness, struggling plant worlds, lurking algae… are their extra art tools we can use to share geographies? We will explore paste paint and transparent overlays in our sketches.

Week 5 August 10th, 2026; Things that Happen Nowhere Else

What can only happen in your place? We will look at art examples for across history to find edges of place, singularities of place, and ongoing histories, pathways that we can trace for their story lines…and compare those to universalities to paint. Artists have the capacity to make the district, by highlighting its strengths and freedoms within place. We will also look at dangers to avoid when depicting place and will purposely make unsympathetic sketches.

Week 6 August 13th, 2026; A Sense of Order We Must Follow

There are aspects of place that we cannot control, that consequently may spur us on to further measures to make a more comfortable life. What don’t people know about the sense of order in your favoured place? In summary, we have looked at the forces that push out and pull back to us, concerning the people, the geographic ensemble, and the atmospheres of place. These are concurrently all going on location, and it may be the artists’ gift to archive these emphasized forces for the wider community. Environmental awareness, and the meaningfulness of place can therefore potentially ripple out across distance and time.