The tutor

John Meaker

He will run practical workshops, on skills and techniques, and do demonstrations; or illustrated talks on Art History and Art Insights, with a pencil in his hand.

J.M. studied at St. Albans School of Art, Goldsmiths College and The Royal Academy Schools. He has a long experience of tutoring workshops, in oil, watercolour, acrylic, pastel and various forms of drawing, lecturing on Classical and Modernist Art forms, at Missenden Abbey and West Dean College.....................................................

"When I studied at those colleges it was in an era of change and transformation, a revolutionary time in the Arts. There was still a link to the classical tradition and I was lucky to have had tutors like Maurice Field teaching search and structure in drawing, light and tone in painting, learning to look. Field was himself taught by Sickert and Tonks, he passed on Tonks' palette, renaissance colours. I was lucky to have John Mills as a sculpture tutor and follow his ideas about dynamics and form. Arnold Van Praag taught the power of the image and Terrence Ibbott taught 20th century drawing - Cezanne's structure passes to Giacometti's facets and spatial relationships which influence Coldstream and Uglow.

I had Andrew Forge and Dorothy Meade as tutors at Goldsmiths, she was known as Bomberg's star pupil. Bomberg , himself a student of Tonks, was I believe the 20th century's most exciting teacher of drawing having a clarity of vision and Cezanne's search for structure, a passionate purposeful approach with gestural energy and expression, accommodating Cubism and Abstract simplicities.

While I was at Goldsmiths, Malcolm McClaren, the Svengali of Punk, was in my Fine Art year group of 12. There was a changing of the guard at Goldsmiths when Andrew Forge went to be professor of fine art at Yale in the USA. I fought my student war, still unresolved, against the tutors of the YBA generation. I considered their preoccupations were left overs from my teenage sixties and that underground Art scene. Before I went to Goldsmiths it was fun mocking tradition and producing novelties but even then it was a footnote to something broader and deeper - my apprentice craftsmanship. I thought then the Art world was headed up a cul de sac, that faith in conceptual Art was an intellectual insult to anyone over the age of 15, and although I can see it has its uses for advertising and political propaganda, I still think that.

Maybe of the positives I took from Goldsmiths ' modernism was a continuing interest in the "ideas thing', in ideas and narrative Art.

At The Royal Academy Schools I attended as Keeper's Guest from 76 - 81. I was a regular in the 5 day a week Life Room, with tutors Norman Blamey, Leonard McCroombe and Peter Greenham, Keeper (Headmaster). The full time Life Room and compulsory Life Studies were abandoned and dropped in 1986 when John Hoyland was elected Keeper. Practically all the other major Art Schools abandoned painting and drawing as core studies in the early 1970s. Robert Hughes says, in his, the best book on 20th century Art "a thousand years of tradition were thrown away in a single generation, in the name of creativity" !

I teach drawing and painting, what used to be called Fine Art. Whatever limited experience a practising Artist has in these subjects it will be their foundation, their refuge, and a source of power and energy to whatever Art Form or medium they have chosen in which to work. Without basic skills and techniques as well as the disciplines of analysis the artist and their work will lack underlying strength - they will be dependent on bluff and their personal fragile idiosyncrasies."

"As a teacher it is my task to develop in each student/artist a unique and independent process of work using whichever are appropriate classical or modernist skills or techniques". ............Presently, since 2005, he runs Art Workshops and Courses at Abbotsbury Studio, in an exquisite landscape on the West Dorset coast.

SUBJECTS FOR TALKS with exciting power point illustrations include: (All my subjects discuss the relationship of modern practice to traditional Art forms.)

1. THE ESSENTIALS OF OBSERVATION IN ART (a dialogue with the truth): tonal painting, structural drawing, and life drawing. Including the important influences of Sickert, Tonks and Ruskin.

2. MASTERS OF 20TH CENTURY DRAWING, their insights and innovations: Paul Cezanne, Henry Tonks, R. Sickert, David Bomberg, Alberto Giacometti, Euan Uglow, Frank Auerbach.

3. CROSSING THE BRIDGE from a 19th century photographic to a C20th vision of Abstract, among the keys and reasons for the new language in Art are the need for Analysis and the search for Simplicity.

4. ABSTRACT VALUES IN LANDSCAPE PAINTING. From classical theories of composition and colour, to the main sources of Abstraction, and contemporary practices.

5. A PAINTER’S TOOLBOX: skills and techniques: tonal balance and colour basics; including: comparative proportions, pentimenti, contraposta dynamics, brushwork mosaic.

6. FOTHERGILL’S LAWS OF DRAWING: (1) Volume and the projection of the sense of touch. (2). Simplicity of 3D geometry. Principles that apply to all types of Observational Art.

7. ALEXANDER COZENS – “The first great Abstract Innovator and Teacher?” with his chaotic, contraposta, sketch processes. Published, in 1770, “A New Method”, painting processes still relevant and useful to painters; a signal influence on Turner and Constable.

8. HUMAN FIGURE Painting and Drawing, from the innovators of the early 20th century to Contemporary Artists. The modern era features many distinguished women Artists.

9. “PAINTERLY PAINTING”, GESTURAL and SPONTANEOUS. Titian to de Kooning. Mark making variety, alla prima painting, thick and thin, experiment with colour & materials.

10. COLOUR PRINCIPLES – Fundamental colour practices and useful theories for painters; illustrated with work by Artists of many periods; especially from Impressionism and after.

DEMONSTRATIONS. In a two-hour session JM will demonstrate useful traditional and modern techniques as well as some of his own innovations in Painting/Drawing. Suggestions: A Portrait from Life (using a volunteer), A Jazzed up Constable (from a picture book), A Life Painting or Drawing (with a life model), or A Still Life (fruit, flowers, pots and jars). While demonstrating JM will discuss technical issues and the practical uses of tone and colour.

John Meaker

Click here to see images of students' & artists' work made at Abbotsbury Studio.

Click here to see images of John Meaker's work.

Booking information

John Meaker
White Hall Farm
Leigh, Sherborne, Dorset, DT9 6JG.

Enquiries welcome.

Once booking has been confirmed, fees cannot be transferred or refunded. It is advisable to insure against losses of fees due to illness or other mishap.

For local accommodation we can advise, or see the Abbotsbury Village website.

Contact details

JM - 07816 850107

mobile - 07816 850107

studio - 01305 871479

email:

Abbotsbury Studio
Rodden Row
Abbotsbury
Dorset DT3 4JL