Wet on Wet Watercolor: Paint Looser and Freer with Lisa Goren

This is a class designed to help create a looser approach to watercolors, enable a student to feel more capable with the paints, and end “tight” painting. The workshop focuses on working with water, learning how to mix colors, understanding paper, and understanding the strengths (and weaknesses) of the medium. Within the 4½ hours (1/2 hour for lunch), we’ll work with a “wet-on-wet” approach for much of the time using many different surfaces and methods. Students will work with several pieces and may not finish any of them (because they’ll have to dry). However, the point of this class is not to have you walk out with a completed painting but, rather, with a new “box of tools” to compliment your painting style. For students who are familiar with watercolors or repeating the class, this is a great opportunity to try something different and use it on a project you’re already working on.

Lisa Goren was born in California and raised in NYC. And yet, she has dreamed of Polar landscapes since she was in her teens. Her first trip took her to Antarctica where she was inspired and captivated by the landscape. She has also traveled to Iceland, Alaska, and the High Arctic to increase her understanding of the Polar Regions. Her watercolors show an unfamiliar landscape in a new light. By using vibrant colors and taking risks with different surfaces, she makes the viewer reevaluate their understanding of both these landscapes and their beliefs in the potential of the medium. Her works create questions about the nature of abstraction and our planet as many of her pieces are representations of unfamiliar, threatened terrains.

Lisa’s work can be found in personal collections all over the world, from Australia to Iceland, and the United States. She was awarded a place on the 2013 voyage of The Arctic Circle, an artist residency sailing near the North Pole. This “trip of a lifetime” is just the beginning of the next phase of her Polar work. Her work was recently featured in the New York Times. Lisa has been teaching, painting, and working out of Boston, Massachusetts for the past 25 years. . This year she is the Artist-in-Residence for the South Shore Art Center in Cohasset, MA. She is represented by Paula Estey Gallery, Newburyport, MA.