The Professional Landscape Programme offers landscape artists, who are at the point of launching themselves professionally, the remarkable experience of a year of guidance, mentoring, one-to-one and group tutorials and professional development from leading artists in the field.
Held over six weekends in the year, each two months apart, the Professional Landscape Programme includes participation from many of the leading landscape artists associated with the Newlyn School of Art. Anita Reynolds and Jesse Leroy Smith will be leading the sessions across the year for 2024/25, other artists sharing their experience with the group and often engaging individually with participants' work will include Paul Lewin, Anthony Garratt, Gareth Edwards, Imogen Bone, Maggie O’Brien, Jon Doran, Rachael Reeves, Luke Knight, and Hannah Woodman among other artists.
As a genre landscape painting is relatively new in terms of art history but its cultural impact is complex and diverse. We will explore its traditions and progressive movements and how contemporary artists are reinventing its meaning and relevance. With profound environmental challenges, it is central to our understanding of the world. Alongside how it can convey cultural identity through a sense of place, geology, climate and geography it can also express human themes such as solace, mortality and freedom. Interpretations such as the picturesque versus signs of human habitation, or historical narratives versus the abstract and sublime can all be investigated.
We will be sharing insights and the issues that can determine your own contemporary and meaningful interpretation. We will support you to see more clearly how to develop a recognizable, individual language through factors such as how we effectively paint outdoors and in the studio, exploiting rapid spontaneous gestural work or refining a more mediative and layered approach. We can all share a wealth of knowledge regarding practical issues such as paint properties through varnishes, primers, supports framing and underpainting to using found materials or pigments.
All the tutors have carved out distinctive responses to the landscape and exhibit their work, in galleries that support the genre, nationally and internationally. Visiting artists from around the country will also share how they have established their approach and illustrate the diverse ways they have supported their practice financially and creatively. All this will inform how you can seek out appropriate networks, contacts and opportunities.
The year provides mentoring, one-to-one and group tutorials and professional development in a supportive and constructive environment. Work is created by those attending the course between sessions (sessions themselves are non-practical) and brought in for the weekends to gain guidance from the tutors and art specialists. At times, on each weekend, there are up to six artists teaching the sixteen to eighteen participants at the same time, giving an amazingly high ratio of contemporary artist tutors to students.
We have found that the camaraderie of the groups on our yearlong courses, both during the course and afterwards, has been a lasting benefit for those who attend the mentoring courses. Networking opportunities with artists, curators and arts leaders are invaluable to professional artists. We encourage students to look at a wide range of artists to who they might relate and to further understand the context in which they are working. Fundamentally, the rigorous feedback and support build the confidence each participant needs to progress as a professional artist.
We understand that some artists may need to explore other subjects or themes during the year and we can support and feedback on these works, but the programme is suited to those where landscape is their central source of inspiration.
One of the topics covered in the course is a discussion of the range of ways in which you can get your work seen by the public from approaching commercial and public gallery spaces to artist-led shows, social media, art competitions, residencies, promoting events in the press, open studios and grant-funded projects.
We are delighted to announce that we have negotiated an agreement from the Patrick Heron Estate to be able to take the Professional Landscape Programme students to visit the artist’s garden in the spring. The garden was the inspiration for Heron’s celebrated Garden Paintings of the 1950s and 1990s.
Other highlights will include studio visits to see Michael Porter and Richard Cook’s work. Anita Reynolds will share her projects including one where she is walking and painting the whole Cornish coast path in the spring of 2023. We will also have Gareth Edwards talking about his experiences writing and launching his fantastic book entitled Painting Abstract Landscapes. Hannah Woodman will be taking us through the history of landscape painting which makes for a fascinating illustrated story. These are just a few of the topics covered by tutors taking part in the Professional Landscape Programme.
Participants in the programme will each take part in one of three shows at Chapel House Hotel with opening previews and a major final exhibition in an impressive space with a public gallery feel - Tremenheere Gallery near Penzance. These allow us to address how best to present your work to the public, curating, marketing and photographing your work. The final session at the gallery includes the opportunity for each student to talk informally with the group and any members of the public in the gallery. We have found this to be an extremely useful way to bring together the artistic journey of the course for each participant and help them to get support in considering their path after completing the programme.
We offer everyone interested in applying for the course a free 45-minute one-to-one Zoom call with one of our lead tutors. Simply fill in our Application Form embedded below and we will contact you about arranging an informal interview. Alternatively, if you have any questions you can get in touch via Contact Us.
Course price: £3,200
2024/25 dates have now been released, please see the sessions below;
Session 1 - Saturday 2nd & Sunday 3rd of November 2024
Session 2 - Saturday 18th & Sunday 19th of January 2025
Session 3 - Saturday 15th & Sunday 16th of March 2025
Session 4 - Saturday 10th & Sunday 11th of May 2025
Session 5 - Saturday 5th & Sunday 6th of July 2025
Session 6 - Saturday 27th & Sunday 28th of September 2025
To view our other Year Long Courses, please click here.
CONTOURS 2023/24 and the Instagram page for the programme.
Header image by Cawston Garratt.
Course thumbnail image by Rachael Reeves
Artworks in the course page gallery by Rachael Reeves, Anthony Garratt, Marie Claire Hamon, Gareth Edwards, Barry Cawston, Anita Reynolds, Paul Lewin and Jon Doran.
