This three day intensive outdoor painting seminar will focus on working outside your comfort zone by examining the saturation of the visual moment without old rules, recipes, and ‘how to’.

Shils will encourage intermediate and experienced painters to “swim” within the processes of observation without really “knowing” rules, and discovering a confidence not based on ideas of what you are supposed to do! Becoming you requires letting go of reliance on worn out recipes, inherited expectations and other artist’s rules. Emphasis will be placed on paying attention visually with a playful yet astute imagination without worrying about conformity. Learn to interrogate ways of seeing with fresh, more opened eyes.

Structure of the seminar will include lecture, group discussion and personal instruction with the majority of time spent painting outdoors right in town. On the first morning, before painting, you will focus on interrogational drawing as the “critical choreographic fuel for the visual thought engine”.

Be prepared to ponder how your work is influenced by some or all of these questions: Do you ever forget who you are? How do you see what you don’t know is there? Are you able to find your way without knowing the way? Are you making it up as you go or sticking to formulas someone taught? Where is the source of your decision making? Do you recognize “accidents” as full of possibility or do you marginalize them playing it safe with recipes and rules? How many questions can go unanswered and which ones do you pay attention to?