Courses

Meet the Great Painters


Each 90 minute session contains:

  • Close looking - each week we'll start by focussing on a pivotal masterpiece from our chosen artist's career.  I'll introduce a range of techniques that will help us to explore the painting deeply, just using our eyes.
  • Presentation - I'll give an overview of the artist's life leading up to that work, and set the wider cultural and social context.
  • Group interpretation - we'll then return to the featured artwork, using our new knowledge to deepen our connection with it.
  • Relaxed conversation - throughout, I'll share and invite personal reflections and responses - but only if you want to!

Designed to fit around busy lives:

  • No problem if you can't make the live Zoom session: a recording is posted weekly (and available for six months).
  • If you do join on Zoom, you choose if you want to participate or simply listen in.
  • No homework, no assessment, no pressure!


Summer/Autumn 2026

LEONORA CARRINGTON
June 2026
Wednesdays, 6.30-8pm GMT

Spend time with the beautiful and mysterious works of Leonora Carrington. We'll follow Carrington's extraordinary life as she excapes her destiny as a English debutate, fleeing to Mexico via Surrealist Paris. Importantly, we'll take time to enter her imaginative world, drawing on our own store of myths, dreams and stories to bring these complex works to life.

Wed 3 June
Wed 10 June
Wed 17 June
Wed 24 June

£25.00

HENRI MATISSE
September 2026
Wednesdays, 6.30 - 8pm GMT

Discover why Matisse crossed over from Bourgeois to Bohemian, confusing friends, family and critics alike. In this course, we'll look closely at the early part of his career in Paris, following his career up to the infamous Salon D'Automn of 1906, when he emerged as the leader of a wild new generation of artists, wielding colour like 'sticks of dynamite', and changing art forever.

Wed 9 September
Wed 16 September
Wed 23 September
Wed 30 September

£35.00

PABLO PICASSO 
November 2026
Wednesdays, 6.30-8pm GMT

Continue the journey to Bohemian Paris around the turn of the twentieth century. In this course, we'll follow in the footsteps of the young Picasso as he tears up the rule book, artistically and socially, and opens the way for generations of future modernists. We'll focus on his early years, up to his groundbreaking work, Les Demoiselles D'Avignon, and the beginnings of Cubism.

Wed 4 November
Wed 11 November
Wed 18 November
Wed 25 November

£35.00