Annie Luke Turner
22nd - 24th June
£TBC
Intuitive Abstraction - Working in the Landscape With All Your Senses
This three day course is for beginners right up to more experienced artists. The focus is on freeing up, experimenting, being inspired by more than just the visual, and taking risks. No mark you make will be ‘wrong’. We will work on big paper using mixed media materials and a variety of painting implements - some conventional, some not. The work we produce may vary depending on each participant from semi abstract right through to pure abstract.
Before the course starts you will be sent some simple prep work for you to do in a landscape of your own choice at your own pace before you come. These drawings and some sketching in the surrounding countryside at The Lund will help us to launch into mark making and painting exercises. There will be demonstrations throughout the first 2 days and a focus on layering the drawing and painting. On the third day we will think more about composition and Annie will give time to each participant individually to develop the work in their own style.
At the end of the course you will have developed skills in mark making, layering, experimental drawing, and composition. You will have a tool kit of ideas of ways to start a painting, push a painting on and push through with a painting when you are stuck. The paintings you will have made maybe resolved, but also maybe partially resolved ready to take home. On the last day there will also be a focus on how you will move forward with your painting when you get home.
Lunches and refreshments included.
Days run from 10am to 4pm (ish)
About Annie
Annie has been working as an artist and teacher for 20 years since gaining a first class degree at Cheltenham School of Art. She has a great deal of teaching experience in schools, colleges, art groups and running her own courses.
Annie exhibits and sells her work both in the UK and internationally. She has completed residencies in England, Scotland and Italy and in 2025 won The Women In Art Prize for Abstract Painting.
Annie’s work is rooted in her emotional response to the landscape. She is particularly drawn to understanding and investigating the history of a place. Recent series of paintings have been inspired by islands - especially Scottish islands.
A body of work always starts with sketching in a landscape: “I spend time in the place just sitting and listening, then moving on to sketching - sometimes with eyes closed using the memory of the place to guide the pencil. The sketchbook provides a direct link back to the place so I can open it and be transported back there. It also helps me to understand what it is that I’m becoming interested in, for example, the standing stone drawings became about the shapes of the stones, the grooves and marks on the stones and the fact they seemed to ‘glow’ and appeared ghost - like against the darker background.”
Back in the studio, whether on paper or canvas, what usually happens next is a process of mark-making. Probably barefoot, often with eyes closed, bringing back the feeling of the place, more of an emotional response than an attempt to draw. Sometimes other places find their way in there, Annie is very aware that all her life experiences and emotions also feed the painting. There is always a balance between unpredictable moments with the materials and problem solving the composition.
