Free drawing workshop coming up for our islanders

Because of the remote nature of our location, our artists are at a disadvantage when it comes to studying art and improving their technique and skills. That’s why bringing a figure drawing workshop to Orcas can make such a big impact. The ROAM Art Trail, starting next week, will include a free 2-day Figure Drawing Class with Juliette Aristides, an internationally respected painter, author, and co-founder of the Classical Atelier at the Gage Academy of Fine Art in Seattle.

“It is craftsmanship that opens the door to self-expression. I am excited about teaching the methods from our artistic inheritance. I know that once this knowledge becomes commonplace again, it can only enrich our cultural life.” —Juliette Aristides

Workshop Dates
Thursday, April 9 | 2:45–6:45 PM
Friday, April 10 | 3–8 PM

This workshop typically costs up to $600, but thanks to a percentage of proceeds from artists’ paintings donated to HALO (Hub for Arts & Literature on Orcas), it will be free for Orcas Island artists. Space is generously provided by Orcas Center.

To be eligible, artists must be subscribed to the HALO newsletter (we send only a few emails each year). You can sign up for that and apply for the workshop  at www.wearehalo.org/roam. If there is space, you will receive a notification. Otherwise, you will be placed on a waitlist to be notified of an opening.

Here’s what Bruce Herman, Curator and Director for The Gallery at Barrington Center for the Arts, says about Aristides: “In the past twenty years, there has been a growing movement of younger artists practicing a classically inflected form of painting and sculpture. To some eyes, this group appears to act as though modern art never happened. Where are the deliberate distortions of the human form, the jagged and confrontational compositions? Where are the protests over social inequities and power relations? The in-your-face challenges to taste and decorum? These painters and sculptors are sophisticated and quite aware of modernism and its social implications, yet have chosen a different path from their contemporaries. Critics of the group––often referred to as the “atelier movement”––have opined that it is retrograde, as though art history only moves in a linear fashion, leaving behind “passé” art forms. This view takes its lead from avant-gardism—a kind of militant rejection of tradition. But these young painters and sculptors beg to differ. Robert Armetta and Juliette Aristides are two of the most accomplished painters of the new “classical” movement—and their work reveals how fresh and compelling traditional approaches to painting can be in the 21st century.“

ROAM is a collaboration between HALO and the Orcas Public Library with in-kind support from Outlook Inn, Darvill’s Bookstore, Orcas Center, Orcas Open Arts, Emmanuel Episcopal Parish Hall, and the Orcas Chamber of Commerce. Art Trail is funded in part by an SJC LTAC grant, and the drawing workshop is made possible by proceeds from artists’ work.