FREE! Plein Air Oil Painting Workshop (Waitlist)

Plein air painting is one of the fastest growing forms of painting today, but it can be very intimidating to get started. This 2.5 hour course will provide you with the fundamentals to get you outside and painting with confidence. We will cover a few essential steps to get you started and onto a continued successful experience painting from life in our beautiful natural Alberta. Students must have some experience in painting, as this is a course for first-time painting outdoors.

Participants are welcome to sign out supplies and paint during the Leighton Art Centre’s Plein Air Festival after this workshop ends. For more information about our plein air festival, please visit https://leightoncentre.org/event/paint-the-foothills-2021/

Weather: In case of rain, activities will be performed inside the museum or one of the art studios of the Leighton Art Centre. Extremely poor weather may result in cancellation. 

Audience: This workshop is suitable for intermediate artists wishing to develop some new Plein Air skills! Open to ages 14+.

Supplies:  Will be supplied by the Leighton Art Centre thanks to funding from Alberta Culture Days! This is an outdoor workshop, so please wear weather appropriate clothing, and don’t forget to pack your bug spray, sunscreen, hat, jacket, a water bottle, snacks, and anything else you may need to enjoy your day!

Registration cost:  Free BUT please reserve your spot!!! Registration is first come, first served.

All participants must sign our Covid-19 Liability waiver prior to their participation in a workshop. You can view our Covid-19 liability waiver here: https://leightoncentre.org/workshop-covid-19-liability-release-waiver/

Cancellation and Refund Policy: This is a free workshop! Please note – we have a limited number of tickets available, so PLEASE let us know ASAP if you can not make it to this workshop, so that we can offer your spot to someone else.

Artist/Instructor/Guide

Louise has spent her life surrounded by art. She was fortunate to grow up in a home with parents who took an avid interest in going to galleries and art auctions and surrounded her in colour and design. Many Saturday mornings were spent listening to her parents discuss the merits of a work of art. Over time, their home was filled with intriguing (although not necessarily famous) pieces of Canadian art from early impressionism to contemporary. Under this influence, Louise was always drawing, painting and building her creations.

Louise Lacey-Rokosh completed her Bachelor of Fine Art (BFA) in Painting in 1982. Discovering that she also had a passion for math, she chose to complement her Fine Arts degree with a Masters in Architecture (MArch) in 1987, and also completed her Masters in Architectural Technology (MSc) from Edinburgh UK in the same year.

After many years in a successful career as a Senior Design Architect in England and Canada, Louise felt the lure of painting calling her again. Eventually, she left the field of Architecture in 2005 to paint full time. Her very graphic background has had a strong influence in her painting. Every painting, even those completed plein air, start with a carefully composed notan to ensure that the paintings will have strong composition, balance and light. These simple little drawings have kept her focus on what is important even as the light changes or the still life fades.

Louise has been influenced by many artists throughout her life. They ebb and flow throughout her thoughts as she paints. What she admires most in other painters is not necessarily their technical skills but their ability to paint and leave their “hand writing”, their personal identifiable brushwork, on their paintings. This is what Louise strives for in every painting; to capture a moment in time with a sense of light and space, with her own identifiable handwriting.

Louise’s paintings are in private collections in Canada, USA, and England. She has won professional competitions in the USA as well as exhibited in numerous group and solo shows. In 2019, she was in two juried group shows and two solo exhibitions in Calgary Alberta.

https://www.cllacey.com