Relationships Are Everything: Using Intentional Choices that Combine Form, Line, Color, Light, Shadow, and Contrast to Create a Balanced Piece of Art with Cynthia Inson (Thursdays)

Relationships are everything, including in the making of strong, resonant art. This eight-week class explores how the essential components of visual language work together to create paintings with clarity, depth, and intention.  Moving beyond the pursuit of a “pretty picture”, students will learn how relationships between elements are what give artwork its strength, coherence and emotional impact. Through brief weekly introductions and focused exercises, the course emphasizes the decision-making process behind effective composition.  Students will investigate how the placement of objects, scale and mass, value and contrast, light and shadow, line, color, and perspective interact to shape a compelling visual statement. These concepts are then applied directly to individual painting projects, allowing each artist to work at their own scale and in the medium of their choice. As the class progresses, students will learn to pull these elements together, refining their ability to adjust, balance, and strengthen visual relationships with their work. The result is a deeper understanding of how intentional choices lead to more powerful and meaningful paintings.

Materials List

Cynthia Inson:  The best thing about being an artist is the journey of learning, analysis, decision making and discovery that I so enjoy as I create. All these things truly fuel and run my engine. Painting is much like writing to me. Instead of words I am using paint, color, brushstroke, lines, form to develop the story and create an impression of mood, light, distance, and three-dimensionality on a two-dimensional surface and space. My goal, as an artist, is to captivate the viewer, to convince them to feel that sense of awe and joy that I felt seeing the sky that I painted or the mountains, roses, water, whatever. The goal is to stop them in their tracks and for them to respond and enjoy the impression the painting evokes. The added challenge, for me as an artist, is also to create paintings that continue to draw the viewer in, to visually wander, to see parts or the whole of the painting differently over time. This worthy challenge also continues to fuel my growth as an art. Education: Undergraduate in Art History and Studio Arts, Masters in Anthropology and Archeology. Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas. I'm thrilled to be part of the Faculty for the New Mexico Art League. Honored to be represented by the Nedra Matteucci Galleries, Santa Fe, New Mexico.