Last September, The Academy of Visionary Art offered its Fall Seminar with Autumn Skye, who flew in from the West Coast of Canada to teach a wonderful group of twenty-one students, who arrived in Italy from fifteen different countries. It was an intense ten days, where everyone was in the studio all day and most evenings as well, absorbing Skye’s rich variety of teachings. This time, I was there to help organise and hold the space, while taking full advantage of my responsibilities by becoming a student as well and following her class.
Skye is an experienced teacher - always happy to share her little tricks and secrets in the art of acrylic painting. I like to call her the magician of acrylics, because she really is a wonder to behold. Over the years, Skye has developed her own method which allows her to render some astounding visions with softness and depth. She starts by blocking in the image in grey tones, using different shades of white and raw umber, then refining the image step by step by bridging the tones until she gets some very smooth transitions, especially in the skin tones. For a traditional oil painter like me, it was a steep learning curve - switching off my brain from “blending” in order to practice “bridging” instead.
The grey underpainting took up most of the ten-day seminar because - the better the underpainting, the more the painting looks finished once its glazed. Skye is impressively fast and precise in her brushstrokes, and it was a real pleasure to sit next to her during the seminar and watch her render three different paintings. Some participants, on the other hand, became a bit frustrated by her speed, and felt that they were falling behind after just two days of class! We explained that everyone paints at their own rhythm and they are here to learn, not to race further ahead. Skye even had a little joke (she has a lot of jokes, actually!) about the rabbit and the turtle. The rabbit starts out the race way too fast and gives up near the end because he’s too tired to finish. Meanwhile the turtle takes her time but eventually reaches the finish line and wins the race.
Jokes aside, we worked on the subject of Archetypes for this course, and Skye asked me to give the class a presentation on that theme. Archetypes are basically primordial patterns or universal experiences that shape our lives and our behaviour as human beings. For example, Jung categorised the Archetypes into 12 main types: The Innocent, the Orphan, the Hero, the Caregiver, the Explorer, the Rebel, the Lover, the Creator, the Jester, the Sage, the Magician, and the Ruler. For my presentation, I covered most of these while adding the Self, the Shadow, the Anima/Animus, the Persona, the Child, the Mother and the Father. At the end, I focussed on the Archetypes that interest artists the most, such as the Mystic, the Magician, the Alchemist and the Visionary, illustrating each slide with paintings from the History of Art, then finishing with examples from contemporary Visionary Art.
The next morning, I gave an Inner Journey, inviting the students to meet their Higher Self, who guided them to see more clearly which archetype they embody now, and which archetype they are aspiring to become. It was a journey of self-discovery and even transformation. Archetypes are the foundation of our personality, and plunging into this subject matter for a painting makes us reflect upon our life - on where we are now, and where we are going.
The images that appeared on the canvases spoke for themselves: a musician finding her true self in the jungle, a goddess of the wolves, a creator of the universe, a magician of the four elements, a sun god, a guardian of peace, and a snake goddess with her kundalini rising - just to give you a few examples of what can come out of your heart when you look deep within. Many of the students underwent some beautiful inner processes, including myself. I worked on a painting of my Higher Self - a portrait of an older version of myself under the full moon, with a white buck on one side and a horned owl over my shoulder.
By chance, the seminar took place during a powerful combination of the Full Moon and a Lunar Eclipse, with the Fall Equinox occuring a few days later. Many of us were deeply affected by the confluence, and suffered through some sleepless nights. We ended up singing and dancing to bring about release, making a fire ceremony on the terrace to celebrate the Fall Equinox. I sang for the fire and for the elements while each of us burnt a piece of paper where we’d written down our intentions - of what we’d like to release from our lives and what we’d like to bring in during the next season. Over the course of those ten days, a deep kinship evolved between all the members of the seminar, and we really felt like a close community of artists within our artistic bubble.
Please find out more about our Seminar on The Academy of Visionary Art website.
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