Expressive Landscape Painting: A Sense of Place

Join Annabel for a week of painting where imagination, memory and intuition take centre stage. Designed for students with prior painting experience working in oil, acrylic or gouache, this course explores a personal approach to landscape that moves beyond literal description to capture atmosphere, emotion and a sense of place.

The course begins with a visit to the Sidney Nolan survey at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Nolan's deeply personal interpretations of landscape will spark conversations about memory, identity and place, and inspire new ways of thinking about painting.

Reference material, such as sketches, drawings, painted studies or photographs, will provide the starting point for you to create a series of paintings inspired by places that hold personal meaning. Students will be encouraged to work from memory and imagination, allowing paintings to evolve through experimentation and intuition.

Through individual mentoring and critique, Annabel will support each student's creative process and goals. Drawing on examples from the Fauves to contemporary artists, she will discuss expressive approaches that prioritise emotional response over objective reality. Using colour, composition, scale, mark-making and paint handling, you'll explore new ways to express your connection to place.

By the end of the course, you'll have developed a series of paintings, greater confidence in your visual language, and new strategies for building work from memory, imagination and personal experience.

Entry to the exhibition is included in the course fee.

Course Schedule
The following is an indicative course schedule only. The content and pace of the sessions may vary in response to the students in the program.

Day 1 – Introduction to the NAS studio. Review of student reference material and discussion of individual goals. Attend the Sidney Nolan exhibition at AGNSW.

Day 2 – Develop small studies in response to reference material. Emphasis on experimentation and personal direction.

Day 3 & 4 – Building upon ideas from Day 2, develop larger paintings or a series of small/medium size works. Emphasis on working from memory/imagination and responding intuitively as paintings evolve.

Day 5 - Resolution of paintings, concluding with a group critique and discussion of body of work produced.

* NAS Short Courses are open to students of ages 16 years and over. The NAS Art Club is open to students between 15 - 17 years of age.

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

* What to bring? Please refer to the list of required materials in the Art Materials field below. 

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

Source Material

Please bring a range of source material, such as drawings, sketches, painted studies, photos of a place you feel connected to. This could be landscape, seascape or an urban environment.

* Please bring your source material on Day 1 as it will be your starting point for discussion with Annabel

Art Materials

• Visual Arts diary for notes & sketches: A4 or A5 (required Day 1 for Nolan exhibition)
• 2B & 4B pencil, eraser, sharpener
• Masking tape and some bull dog clips
• A selection of canvases/ canvas boards/your preferred surface
• Thick paper (300 gsm)/cardboard plus gesso – great for making lots of quick studies 
• Plastic spray water bottle (to stop acrylic paint from drying out on palette)
• Old cotton rags and/or paper towels
• If using oil paints - 3 wide necked glass jars WITH LIDS & ODOURLESS solvent
• If using acrylic/gouache - large plastic water containers (yogurt tubs work well)
• Palette or large piece of sealed board/laminex/perspex/large plastic serving plate/roll of baking paper
• A range of brushes varying in size from small to large. Bring what you have. If buying brushes, recommended are large round hog hair bristle (not soft sable) as great for gestural, expressive work
• Palette knife
• Plastic containers with lids to store unused acrylic paint overnight (optional)

Students are welcome to work in oil or acrylic. If you already own gouache paints you may wish to bring them for quick prep studies on paper, but not necessary to purchase. Please bring paints you usually work with. As a minimum you should have:

• Titanium White
• Burnt Umber
• Ultramarine
• Cobalt Blue
• Cerulean Blue
• Cadmium or a Mid Red
• Alizarin Crimson
• Cadmium or a Mid Yellow
• Lemon Yellow
• Yellow Ochre

Optional additional

• Raw Umber
• Raw Sienna
• Burnt Sienna
• Terre Verte (oil)

Annabel Butler holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Hons (Painting) from the National Art School and studied on scholarship at the Byam Shaw School of Art, London and the New York Studio School. A practising artist for over 20 years, she has exhibited widely and is represented by Stella Downer Fine Art, Sydney. A regular finalist in numerous national art prizes, Annabel has won the 9x5 Landscape Prize (2019 & 2025), the Glebe Open Art Prize (2004 & 2013), the Waverley Oil Prize (2004) and a NYSS Mercedes Matter Award (2025). She has been awarded artist residencies at Bundanon Studios (2003), Carss Park Cottage (2024) and Primrose Park Studios (2025), all in NSW, the Vermont Studio Center, USA (2001) and the AGNSW's Moya Dyring Studio at the Cité Internationale, Paris (2006). Her works are held in numerous private and public collections including Bundanon Trust, Hurstville Museum & Gallery, the National Art School Collection and the Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney.