Event

Abstraction: Landscape as a Source

With Jordan Wolfson

September 12–14, 2025
10am–4pm
Adult Workshops
Adult Fall 2025

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Abstraction: Landscape as a Source
w/Jordon Wolfson
A three (3) day workshop
September 12-14
10:00 am – 4:00 pm
This workshop explores both plein air painting and the process of abstraction. In the mornings we will work in the traditional plein air approach -painting directly outdoors and developing our tonal relationships in response to the landscape, in search of a convincing sense of space and light. As the mornings progress we will also explore a variety of ways of handling and applying paint, different kinds of mark-making, and see how these different kinds of marks relate to space, light, and form in different ways.
In the afternoons we will work indoors on one canvas for the duration of the workshop. We will be using our morning paintings as source material for an ongoing and improvisational discovery of abstract painting. As the painting develops, we’ll experiment with making a mess! Tolerating chaos! And exploring how to find order amidst the chaos.
What we’ll cover in the afternoon Process of Abstraction:
• How to PLAY with Paint!
• What can this STUFF Do? What’s physically possible?
• Ways of MAKING MARKS and HANDLING PAINT.
• How to EXPERIMENT with FORMAL ELEMENTS (e.g. Line, Color, Shape, Edge, Value, Texture, etc.)
• How to RISK and make a MESS!
• How to TOLERATE CHAOS.
• How to receive the chaos and discover HIDDEN ORDER.
• What it means to COLLABORATE with the Painting.
• How to DISCOVER and STRENGTHEN COMPOSITION.
• Discovering and Clarifying Your Own PERSONAL CREATIVE TEMPERAMENT and Way of Painting.
Risk, spontaneity, and play will be encouraged!!!
Biography:
Jordan Wolfson was born and raised in Los Angeles and graduated with an MFA from Yale School of Art in 1991.
“I fell in love with painting as a young man when I realized that painting isn’t about making a picture; painting is about exploring life…Over the years, as life inevitably serves up its challenges and obstacles, this of course showed up in my painting as well. And I needed to ask myself, facing the difficulties and sacrifices — what is this for? What is this truly for? What is the fundamental truth of this activity, painting – and how does it serve? Not only in my personal life, but in our larger culture and time, and what it means to be human.”
In his recurring explorations of form, space, and light, Jordan has been investigating the relationships between perception, mark, and Consciousness. This has led to his experience of painting as a life practice and means for fundamental understanding.
Exhibiting both nationally and internationally, Jordan’s work is represented in permanent collections worldwide, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the James T. Dyke Collection and the Ballinglen Museum of Contemporary Art. Jordan has received numerous awards including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, the Ingram Merrill Foundation Grant and a Purchase Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; he was a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA and the Ballinglen Art Foundation in Ireland.
Jordan currently lives in Longmont, Colorado.