Art at the Paul Smiths VIC
Frances Gaffney: The Art of Expressive Drawing Workshop
14-15 August 2016

Frances Gaffney: Bloomingdale at Dawn. More examples of the artist's Adirondack drawings, watercolors and oils may be found here.

Skilled teaching artist Frances Gaffney will lead a two-day drawing workshop at the Paul Smiths VIC on 14 and 15 August 2016. Participants explore artists’ processes, build professional drawing tools and techniques, and explore new ways of seeing. A variety of materials will be discussed. Workshop participants will draw outdoors, weather permitting. Frances will contact registered participants and let them know what materials to bring. A $50 deposit is required to reserve a spot in the workshop. Workshop participants do not have to be registered for the Adirondack Plein Air Festival, which begins on 15 August. The cost of the workshop is $300. Visit Saranac Lake Artworks for more information about registering for this workshop.

Workshop instructor Frances Gaffney lives and works on a houseboat on the Hudson River in New York. She has been painting since 1974. After attending the Fashion Institute of Technology, she worked in New York as a textile designer. Frances worked both as a free-lance artist and as a full-time print designer in a commercial studio.

Frances is dedicated to representational art, forever classic and enduring. While embracing the influences of the past, Frances explores this timeless genre with a fresh commitment and passion. Each of these contemporary works offers new interpretations of human existence and the ever-evolving natural and man-made world around us. Employing watercolor, oil and pastel, these intimate artworks are always visually accessible, technically proficient and of important artistic merit and accomplishment.

Her Adirondack drawings arose from her sketches and memories of the summers of 2010 and 2011, when she traveled to the Adirondacks to search back-country roads for the legendary waterfalls that had initially drawn her the mountains: "I found the waterfalls and so much more; dreamlike blue mountains, songbirds calling at dawn, winding creeks lined with mossy boulders and vivid expanses of wildflowers - all this vibrant life under the shelter of those bright northern skies."