Introduction to Beachscapes

Join contemporary artist Mathew Lynn on a journey exploring our beautiful local beaches as a subject. You will be encouraged to express your personal visions, experiences, and even memories, whether observational or more experimental.

You will be guided through a process of initial drawing sketches and painting studies to formulate your ideas and compositions. Mathew will then encourage you to move on to a main painting as a way to ‘collect’ all the progress you’ve made throughout the day, showing you how to transfer ideas across media. This will also give you an understanding of their different strengths and applications.

Mathew can also introduce you to processes and strategies that can help you better render an idea and improve your fluency, or to unlock and bring clarity to what you’re trying to achieve in a deeper sense. Mathew will also discuss the work of great artists who have specialized in seascapes, and what makes their work successful, moving, and unique.

Please bring some images that you’d like to work from, either as printouts or on a tablet. Make sure the images are also on your phone. Mathew encourages you to visit your favorite places to take some photos or even make some initial sketches before class, or just bring along whatever materials you’d like to explore. You can also bring drawings and paintings you’ve already done that you wish to expand on. Mathew can assist you with choosing your subject.

You can work in any painting medium; follow the supplied materials list for guidance. As we will start with drawing, bring a sketchbook or paper, and at least a range of pencils plus a Staedtler-type eraser. You can expand on that with a range of drawing materials and papers, and the things you like to use. You can also choose to use drawing media for the entire day.

Mathew will discuss composition, colour, light, learning how to ‘see,’ identifying what is moving you and giving you strong feelings, representation to abstraction, and more! There will be some group instruction, but mostly there will be one-on-one personal guidance. Whether you are a beginner or more experienced, Mathew can give you the exact guidance and challenge you need!

About the teacher

Sydney-based artist Mathew Lynn is renowned for his portraiture and contemporary figurative and landscape painting. With over twenty years of success, Lynn has exhibited with Nanda\Hobbs, exploring themes of personhood and meditative experience. A Master of Art graduate from the University of New South Wales, Lynn has been a finalist in the Archibald Prize eighteen times, winning the People’s Choice Award in 1997 and the Packers’ Prize in 2013. He has also been a finalist in the Wynne, Sulman, Shirley Hannan, and Doug Moran National Portrait Prizes. His work is held in major collections, including the National Portrait Gallery Canberra and Government House Sydney.