Contemporary Painting with Collage and Mixed Media

This transformative course is designed to demystify the art of image construction with a focus on painting and mixed media. Collage will be used as a dynamic tool to explore your subject matter, balance your compositions, test colour and spatial relationships and help you develop your paintings in a more considered way. Explore a diverse range of drawn and painted gestural marks and collage strategies that will enhance your expressive capabilities, expand your visual vocabulary and encourage you to loosen up and venture outside your comfort zone.
Renata Pari-Lewis introduces you to the works of modernist and contemporary artists working in collage and mixed media, and the influence of collage on visual language in contemporary painting. Through demonstrations and group exercises you will learn to mix and understand colour and its tonal relationships and appreciate the key role colour plays in image construction. You will develop new skills to build and balance composition effectively and gain a comprehensive understanding of the visual dynamics involved in creating a compelling image.

*NAS Short Courses are open to students of ages 16 years and over. The NAS Art Club is open to students from ages 15 years and over.

*Drawing and painting short courses may be held in upstairs studios. If access to stairs is not suitable, please contact NAS Short Courses Administration at short.courses@nas.edu.au

Renata Pari-Lewis studied Fine Art in London before completing her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine art at the National Art School. Her work has developed from printmaking to mixed media and installation and she now primarily works in painting. She is interested in pursuing a diverse repertoire of mark making and a dynamic set of chromatic and tonal relationships that evoke the atmosphere and mood of a subject or scenario; a kind of theatre in which light and composition direct the viewer to a particular aspect of the individual and the spaces they inhabit. Over the last three years Renata has been a finalist in the Darling Portrait Prize, Portia Geach, the Mosman Art Prize and KAAF Art Prize. She is represented by Nanda\Hobbs Contemporary in Sydney.

Students must supply their own art materials, please refer to the list below.

• 1 stick of charcoal
• 1 black pencil
• 1 small bottle black ink
• 1 large sheet box board, cut into 4 pieces.
• 1 primed canvas or board, approximately A2 size (not for first week)
• 1 piece watercolour paper (not for first week)
• Small set of Gouache
• Plastic painting palette
• Coloured pencils Eraser
• Stanley or cutting knife
• Acid free craft glue and old brush for glue
• Old rags
• A4 visual arts diary with blank pages

Acrylic paints
Bring any acrylic paints you already have. We recommend artist quality paints e.g. Art Spectrum, Matisse, Derivan Acrylics (check at Parker’s Fine Art Supplies on NAS campus). This is a good general purpose colour list:
• Titanium White
• Phthalo Blue
• Ultramarine Blue
• Yellow Light Hansa
• Yellow Deep
• Matisse Red Light
• Brilliant Alizarin (Crimson)
• Warm Grey

Brushes
Five different brushes - these do not need to be expensive:
• 1 synthetic brush – flat 3-4cm wide
• 1 synthetic flat brushes approximately 1cm wide
• 2 synthetic flat brushes approximately 2cm wide
• 1 sable pointed brush 5mm wide

Collage Materials
• A4 paper: 3 sheets of each colour - black, grey and off-white
• Old book of any kind of text - for tearing out pages
• 4 x A4 sheets of Japanese rice paper – different colours
• Selection of scrap paper for collage - variety of size and colours