Jean Pederson

Jean Pederson
October 5 11, 2009 (Five Teaching Days)
 Faces and Figures in Watermedia
 New to Dillman's www.jeanpederson.com

This course is designed to open the door into exploration of various combinations of water media while dealing with the face and figure. You will be encouraged to take risks beyond the traditions of watercolors in the pursuit of your own personal language. As well as working with traditional watercolor, we will be mixing it up by exploring how everything from watercolor to gouache, gesso, inks, and mark making tools can work together. These techniques can be applied to a variety of styles to create your own unique artistic statement. Emphasis will be placed on personal style.

Jean has been painting for over twenty years, balancing her strong teaching and writing abilities with her continuing aspiration to convey her ideas in visual form. Jean's portrait paintings are based on people who have influenced her in some way. These subjects often reflect different walks of life as well as diverse cultural and religious backgrounds. Expressing the human figure in a language that reflects the twenty-first century is perhaps the greatest challenge in figurative work today.

Jean's traditional practice includes referential imagery of people, still life, landscape and non-referential imagery. Layering of various media offers Jean an assortment of possibilities; quality of edge, line and texture all play a role within her imagery. Although well known for her mastery of watercolors, mixed media has become an important vehicle for her creative expression.

Jean has been honored with numerous National and International awards over the years, and has work placed in the Royal Collection in Winsor, England. In 2005, she was the first recipient of the Federation of Canadian Artists Early Achievement Award, recognizing her many honors and awards for consistently exceptional painting, and for her international writing to promote art education.

Jean has exhibited her work internationally in London, England, Stockholm, Sweden, New York, United Nations, San Francisco, Mexico and across Canada. Outside Jean's traditional practices, she recently completed an exhibit dealing with the changes that have occurred within the social fabric of Rural Canada. Slated to travel to various public galleries, Farm Fragments is as eclectic as the people who made up the rural society. Jean has included paintings, collage (using the old documents to symbolize all that is left of the family farm), and Polaroid transfers of old and new photographs, and installations using the pieces of the old house to tell this story.

The people who broke the land are the real story, they immigrated, toiled and nurtured the land its community. Any experimentation that you practice will ultimately creep into your traditional practice to keep it fresh.

Studio: Something for all levels.                                                                                 
ean offers a partial tuition scholarship.
Workshop Fee: $575 + tax. Includes Model Fee.
 Room & 1 Dinner Fee: $365.50 + tax.