Diving Deeper Into Your Work: a Painting Workshop with Melinda Cootsona

Are you ready to push your work to the next level?

In this fast moving workshop we will explore specific concepts to push your creativity. Color, contrast, composition and limitations will all be explored. What makes one painting look finished and another incomplete? We will look at examples of both your work and others, leaving you with clear ideas to improve your paintings. Melinda will be focusing on the figure but other subject matter may be explored.

Bring a list of your art goals and Melinda will guide each individual with suggestions to reach those goals.

This workshop is for intermediate to advanced oil and acrylic painters. Enrollment is limited to increase individual attention.

Melinda Cootsona has been teaching painting to students of all levels for over 21 years. Beginning with weekly classes in her home studio, her career evolved into teaching workshops throughout the U.S. and Europe. Additionally, Melinda has been on the forefront of eCourse instruction developing her first course in 2012. Known for giving specific feedback and quality, constructive critiques, her courses are in high demand. Teaching creativity and art to students all over the world is an essential part of Melinda’s work.

Greatly influenced by the Bay Area artistic tradition, her paintings focus on the strength of the female figure. Created with layers of oil paint, applied and then scraped away, her paintings reveal figures that fill the canvas in varying poses of contemplation or reflection in abstracted surroundings. Whether in a soft or harsh surrounding, the strength of the female figure is primary.

Melinda’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Bakersfield Museum of Art and the Triton Museum in California, The San Francisco Art Market, The Coos Bay Museum of Art in Oregon, and Art Basel Miami, as well as many group and solo shows throughout the U.S.

Cootsona received her BA from the California College of the Arts. Her work can be found in collections in the United States, Europe, Australia, and China. She is represented by Seager Gray Gallery, in Mill Valley, CA and The Studio Shop, in Burlingame, CA.