Colour, Abstraction and Texture Painting

Learn to incorporate texture with acrylic paints and create visual tensions that bring depth and tactile surfaces to your artworks. Christine Dean will guide you through techniques for integrating texture with flat planes of colour to generate striking visual contrasts and challenge the traditional boundaries between two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms in painting.

Through hands-on exploration, you’ll experiment with layering different elements with acrylic paint to develop unique textural effects, through abstract compositions. Students are invited to bring their own selection of found objects, including fabric scraps, lace, chenille, string, wool, felt, hessian, cardboard, buttons, relief letters and numbers, sand, sawdust, and natural materials like pressed flowers, shells, twigs, leaves, and dried seeds.

Discover new ways to enrich your paintings with three-dimensional depth and contrast, with the exciting possibilities of combining paint, texture and abstraction.

* 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 us at short.courses@nas.edu.au

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

Dr. Christine Dean commenced exhibiting as an artist in 1988.  Her studies include a Bachelor of Arts, majoring in Art History, 1986; followed by a Diploma of Art Education, 1988; a Graduate Diploma in Painting, 1991; a Masters of Fine Arts, 2000 and a PhD, 2010. In 2000 she was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Fellowship and in 2001 an Australia Council Residency at the Los Angeles studio. Christine’s exhibition history includes, Spirit + Place, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; Juice, Art Gallery of NSW, 1997; Points of Departure, Tobey Fine Arts, New York, 2007; Minus Space at PS1, New York, 2009; Fabrik, Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne, 2016 and The Public Body 2.0, Artspace, Sydney, 2017; Solo exhibition 'From the Collection', Penrith Regional Gallery 2022; 'Thinking Through Pink', Wollongong City Gallery 2022; 'The Party', UNSW Art + Design, 2023; Blake Prize finalist, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, 2024. Christine's work is represented in the Art Gallery of NSW permanent collection.

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

• Acrylic paints (essential) including a wide range of colours. Any brand is acceptable and additional supplies are available at Parkers
• Gesso (essential) 500ml or 1litre, gesso can be used as glue
• PVA or craft glue
• Acrylic painting mediums, gloss medium and varnish will be particularly useful
• Note book or sketchbook, drawing media including pencil, charcoal and crayon
• A wide range of brushes from house painting to fine tipped brushes with square, round and angled heads
• Palette for mixing paint eg. disposable paper palettes, paper plates
• Disposable plastic containers and tubs
• Palette knife for mixing and applying paint to surfaces
• Scissors
• Masking tape
• Surfaces to work on, stretched canvas, canvas board, cardboard, suggested size 30 cm to 80 cm. Rigid surfaces are recommended for mixed media
• Mixed media materials including fabric scraps, lace, chenille, string, wool, felt, hessian, cardboard, buttons, relief letters and numbers, sand, sawdust, pressed flowers, shells, twigs, leaves and dried seeds
• Enclosed footwear is essential in all studios on campus. 

The teacher will advise on additional materials as the course progresses. Art materials can be purchased at Parkers Art Supplies on campus at NAS.