The painting becomes a visual expression of the artist’s feelings in response to the subject, rather than a rendering of what the eye alone can see. On each day of this workshop we will start with a very quick plein air landscape, and then go back to work in the studio, paring the same subject down to its bare abstraction in a companion painting. The emphasis will be on exploration and risk taking. There will be a short demonstration at the beginning of each class. Cammie paints mainly in oils, but students may work in their medium of choice.

Cammie Watson’s early artistic training occurred within her family environment, and through self study. After high school she completed a three-year apprenticeship in Germany with artist and master marionette maker Fritz Herbert Bross. She graduated cum laude from Yale College, where she studied philosophy, drawing, color theory, and sculpture. Her father, Aldren Auld Watson, is a painter, illustrator, and author. Her mother, Nancy Dingman Watson, was a poet and children’s book author. Her paternal grandparents, Ernest and Eva Watson, were painters and pioneer color block printers, and Ernest was founder and editor of American Artist magazine and co-founder of Watson-Guptill Publications.